


As long as we can

by Ruta



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Character Death, F/M, Marriage of Convenience, Post-Season/Series 06, Romance, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-08
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-07 13:11:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7716061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruta/pseuds/Ruta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Because we are Stark." Jon smiles for the first time and despite the fatigue that oppresses him, Sansa finds herself admiring the way he looks so much younger, more like the boy of her childhood rather than the man who was Lord Commander of Night’s Watch, who has a crown that has never wanted for himself, whose glory and fame have recount everywhere. "Our honor dies with us and our duty lives in our shadow."<br/>(Where, while Varys goes to Dorne, Tyrion travels to Winterfell for the same reason. Or maybe not.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

In her life, there have been few moments that she is willing to remember where she was overwhelmed by a surprise greater than the one she is feeling. She never would have thought to see him again and yet here he is, in front of her. Alive, unharmed. King's Hand, first counselor of a foreign queen of which she was barely aware.

Tyrion remains at a safe distance. The instant before he lowered the hood of his cloak, Sansa had thought he was one of the children recruited as cooks aid or stableboys and was about to call a guard. She never would have believed, she never would have thought of him.

 _Being prepared for the unexpected rather than what is expected._ This is a lesson that she had to make her own for some time.

Sansa squares her shoulders and closes the door of her bedchamber. Ghost leaves her side to occupy the center of the room, a strategic position of control, ideal for the attack as for defense.

She sees that Tyrion stiffens and gazes nervously towards the direwolf. "Ghost will not hurt you, unless you are not a threat." Now she feels calmer, again self-possessed. Ghost’s behavior reassures her on the unlikely but not impossible presence of more intruders. "How did you get in?"

"In the same way I intend to get out." Tyrion’s wry smile is how she remembered it: clever and apt to irritate others. "From the front door."

Sansa frowns, preventing herself to cast an uneasy glance at the door, where outside there are guards intended for her safety, chosen personally by Jon and that have got the even more intransigent agreement of Brienne.

"It isn’t the loyalty of your guards who you should be worried about, but their unfortunate habit of drinking a glass too much," he says, sensing her concerns. "Not that I disapprove. It is understandable in this cold. Shouldn’t we focus on the second big question?"

Sansa sighs, annoyed by his attitude. " _Why_ are you here?"

"It would appear that you are not happy to see me, my lady wife." The glint in his eyes is openly amused, but the shameless way he looks at her from head to toe is flattering. Knowing him, Sansa thinks that admiration is due in large part by the fact of having found her safe and sound. He is happy, she understands, even relieved.

"My lord husband," she responds in kind.

The admiration palpably changes in open affection and something that painfully remembers the way her father looked at her with approval and pride, constantly worried about her well-being. "Look at you. You truly are a queen of the north."

"I am no queen."

If he notices the angry disgust in the word 'queen', Tyrion skips over it. "I came here on request of the Queen."

"What Queen? If you refer to Cersei-"

"I am not speaking of Cersei." The very idea dumbfounds him. "Have you not received ravens recently? Communications of strange sightings or landings out of the ordinary?"

What is he talking about? Actually, now that she reflects, Sansa must admit that she has realised an unusual shortage of correspondence, but had justified it with bad weather. _Winter is no longer coming. It’s here._

"Then you have been cut off," Tyrion concludes. He doesn’t seem surprised.

And Sansa knows. Enough ravens as not to arouse suspicions, attentively selected messages, filtered informations. There is only one man capable of such a long-term plan. "It’s Littlefinger’s work. It was him."

"Petyr Baelish? Why would he?"

She doesn’t answer. _For the usual reason. For having me. To put myself in the position of having to ask once again for his help._  Sensing her distress at the prospect, Ghost approaches her in a heartbeat and Sansa sinks her fingers into its fur, avoiding think about the horrible 'if '.

"I advise you to prepare yourself."

"For what?"

"Jon will be here soon."

Tyrion gives her a strange look, but doesn’t comment nor addresses her tricky questions of how she know, questions that she wouldn’t know what to say.

 _I just know._ She _knows_ that Jon felt her turbulent emotion s through Ghost with the same certainty she _knows_ that now he is running to her, to make sure of her safety. 

When Jon knocks, at Sansa’s suggestion, Tyrion hides his face. It is a necessary precaution, given Jon’s temperament and his reactions when she spoke to him about the time spent with the Lannisters at King’s Landing.

"Sansa." John breaths her name with so obvious relief that Sansa takes his hand and smiles warmly. "Are you okay?" he asks, looking carefully at her face in search of the panic he felt through Ghost.

Sansa nods, not leaving his hand. "I was going to send a servant to call you. There is someone with whom I would like us to talk together." She hopes that he understands the implicit message. _No more secrets. I want you to trust me._

Jon noted the figure in front of the fireplace, but the presence of Ghost and his lack of reaction seems to have already well disposed him towards the guest, no matter how unexpected. "A friend?"

“I hope so.”

Tyrion decides that that is the signal he was waiting to reveal himself. "It’s a shared desire."

"The Imp!" 

Tyrion grins, but now there is a different light in his smile. "I guess at this point I should bring a hand to my heart and give off 'the bastard boy' with the same startled air?"

"There are no more bastards in Winterfell," Sansa intervenes with a clear warning tone. "The last one was devoured by his hounds."

"A well-deserved end to what I've heard. In this regard, my lady, your grace, I offer my condolences for the death of your brother."

Sansa’s heart has an unpleasant jolt of remorse. _If I had arrived earlier. If I had not kept Jon unaware._ Changes of that kind would have been enough to save Rickon?

Jon lets go his grip around her hand, but Sansa doesn’t abandon his side. The same hand that he has left, she rests it on his arm, trying to comfort him, to remind Jon that she is with him, whatever happens.

He doesn’t look at her. He’s tense and seems to hold his breath as if someone has dealt him a blow treacherously.

Rickon is an open wound, has that effect on both, on Jon in a deeper way.

Sansa saw the body of his brother, cried tears that she believed not to have, the ones that she has vowed will be the last. She refused the help of the other women and accepted only Tormund’s assistance to extract the arrows, causing the least possible damage to the limbs. She cleaned up the blood and mud, she dressed him, brushed the hair and caressed and kissed his forehead, cheeks, recalling the gestures of her mother while the sobs racked her back.

_Mother, I failed. I wasn’t even able to save my brother from the clutches of a monster. How can I hope to save our home?_

For Jon is different. His pain is different. Jon saw Rickon die before his eyes, and even though the sins to expiate remain the same, for him the responsibility of that blame will always fall entirely on his shoulders. For Jon, as Ser Davos told her, is not and will never be a question of 'if', as in her case. It is not a question of chances, but of truths. In the desperation of both there is a grain of truth and in his, perhaps, more than in hers.

Sansa clears her throat, but her voice is low and choked by an emotion that she cannot disguise. "Thank you, my lord."

"Thank you, my lord," Jon echoes. "Thank you, doubly. What you have done for Sansa is not forgotten."

Tyrion seems taken aback. He eyes her. "There are no thanks to the obligation of duty." I wish I had done more. I wish I would have been able to protect you better, his gaze tells and Sansa wants the same thing. She would like to have allowed him.

"Despite the gratitude that I feel," Jon continues with renewed toughness, "give me a reason why I should treat you according to the rules of hospitality and not make you throw in a cell after you have introduced into our house stealthily."

"I give you two." Tyrion takes up the leading scrip hanging at his side and when Ghost produces a mistrustful snarl, opens his arms and lets the direwolf sniffs him and steps muzzle on his body. Once finished, Tyrion sighs. "Can I go on?" he asks in a deliberately exasperated tone.

After Jon’s nod, Tyrion extracts two letters. He doesn’t give them to him, but to Sansa.

Sansa studies the seals and passes a letter with the three-headed dragon’s sigil to John, taking for herself the one with the kraken. Targaryen and Greyjoy.

What Tyrion’s physical appearance had given way to her to imagine (the familiar brooch on the chest, the exotic clothes), acquires a real and frightening note as she reads Theon’s letter. Three dragons. A woman walking in the fire without getting burned. Mother of a formidable army with wich she plans to march against the usurper who sits on the Iron Throne in King's Landing, with or without allies in the Seven Kingdoms. _I owe you this and so much more, Sansa. To you and your family._

When she finishes reading, she tends it to Jon, who doesn’t take it.

Jon has closed his hand into a fist, knuckles white for the force with which he is clutching at nothing.

"Jon?" Sansa calls him, worried. "What is going on?"

“Daenerys Stomborn of the House Targaryen, the First of Her Name, the Unburnt, Queen of Meereen, Queen of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons,” Jon pronounces each title as if he were saying the list of names of the many people who have done a wrong to their family. "This queen, a queen that I still don’t know whether to accept as _my_ queen, commands us to bend the knee or..."

"Or?" she urges him.

"Fire and blood on us and on our home."


	2. Chapter 2

  
"This is what you bring us?" Jon demands with restrained anger. "Winds of war and destruction?"

"It is not as it seems." Tyrion curses in a language she doesn’t know. It resembles a bear's roar. "Daenerys is a passionate woman, but I didn’t think she would be so direct."

Sansa arches an eyebrow skeptically. "Seriously? Do you want us to believe that you weren’t aware of the letter’s contents even if you are her Hand?" She turns to Jon. "Look at his brooch. Father had one identical."

Tyrion, like Jon, seems impressed by her powers of observation. They both gaze at her as if they behold her really for the first time. And it is so, she thinks. Until then for them she was an orphan with a broken heart and a woman devoured by the desire of revenge. Both are dead and from their ashes she is born. Even if were the wounds inflicted by her enemies to kill them both, the daughter-sister and the wife that she was, was her will to bring out something good from that pain. _I am who I am and I'm not ashamed. If I have got where I am is because of who I was._

"You tricked me," Tyrion says, without having the air to accuse her.

Sansa knows of what he speaks. _Cersei_. It was obvious that he couldn’t come in her name. If there is a person that perhaps Cersei hates more than her, this is definitely Tyrion.

"You could have asked."

"And would you have answer me honestly?"

"Have I ever lied to you?" His face darkens.

"No," she admits. "But people change and now you serve the interests of a Queen of whom I know nothing. The history between our family and hers forces me to have reasonable suspicion to believe that peace is not what she seeks. Her letter is a confirmation."

"I can assure you that is not so. I have come with the specific purpose of proposing to your House an alliance.”

"An alliance usually provides benefits for both parties," Jon intervenes. "What has to offer us a Queen who has never set foot in the Seven Kingdoms before? Who has never known in her life nothing but the warmth of the sun?"

"Even if you have been cut off, it doesn’t mean that news are not leaked from Winterfell."

Sansa see how confusion overshadow Jon’s features for a moment, before he disguises it. She shall inform him of what she has discovered. They must call a new Master from the Citadel, someone who is not easy to bribe.

"We know that you are preparing for war," Tyrion continues. "But it is not the same war that affects the rest of us. You prepare to march to the North, when you should arm yourself for the South. My Queen and I couldn’t help but be intrigued. Therefore, I ask you, what horrors and enemies unknown to us lurk beyond the Wall such that persuade you to turn your back to the madness seated on the Iron Throne?"

"The tales were never tales." The expression usually gloomy of Jon promises blood and storm. "The stories with which we have grown up as children tell the truth. There is an army of dead ready to exterminate us and begin an era of cold and perpetual night."

Unlike various Lords of the council, Tyrion doesn’t give in outburst or accuses him of ranting. He scrutinizes him with unfathomable eyes. "Why should I believe that it is not a strategic move to attract our forces on lands that would lead your army in a position of advantage?"

"Because we are Stark." Jon smiles for the first time and despite the fatigue that oppresses him, Sansa finds herself admiring the way he looks so much younger, more like the boy of her childhood rather than the man who was Lord Commander of Night’s Watch, who has a crown that has never wanted for himself, whose glory and fame have recount everywhere. "Our honor dies with us and our duty lives in our shadow."

Sansa smiles, satisfied that she and Jon feel the same way. "We are not interested in what happens south of our borders. Or in who occupies the Iron Throne. When there will be demand, we will be willing to acknowledge any King or Queen who proves himself a fair and noble ruler, but the North remains free and will not bend the knee unless it is not recognized its independence." _We fought to have what we have. We lost our family only to be returned to us what was rightfully ours._  

"Very well." Tyrion sighs, running a hand over his beard. "Let’s say you have convinced me. And let's say I might be able to convince the Queen to see the good side of all this. What do you want in exchange for your promise to ally with us when the time comes to claim the throne?"  

"We want a commitment that you will do the same in time of need," Jon replies. "Can you guarantee it?"

"I can do better." That is purely an expression of Tyrion Lannister, the private amusement of a secret that only he knows and has no immediate plans to share. "I can provide you with a dragon." 

The choice of words catchs Sansa’s interest. _A dragon,_ not _three._ Ghost, tired of their talk, lies before the fire and Tyrion stays where he is, even if the direwolf is breathing down his neck.  "Everyone knows that only the Targaryen can approach their dragons," Sansa says firmly. 

Tyrion points at her his forefinger, tilting his head to one side. "True," he concedes. "But not quite correct, my lady. I myself have been able to establish a diplomatic relationship with Viserion and I have good reason to believe that you, your grace, may succeed if only you wanted to. More than excellent reasons, in fact. I have always had suspicions about the legitimacy of your birth, and I have never believed the official version, not entirely. A man like Ned Stark would never fall back upon himself the shame of such a transgression. A breach in the eyes of the gods and a shameful lack of respect towards his wife. Yet a man is just a man, no matter how worthy of all praise. Despite this, interesting developments were brought to my attention in this regard that, I am sure, will astound you as have stunned me." 

Sansa launches a troubled glance at Jon, who seems to have turned into one of the stone statues of their ancestors in the crypts. She has no idea what Tyrion means, but she has a bad feeling. 

"I have proof that Jon Snow is not the bastard son of Ned Stark, but the legitimate son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark." 

Jon turns pale. "How dare you-" 

“Jon, wait." Sansa prevents him from extracting Longclaw. "Can you prove what you say?" she questions Tyrion.  

Jon looks at her, wounded, but Sansa cannot focus on that. She cannot think about the pain that she is causing to him. _If I think about it, I'm lost._  

"I can." Tyrion has many other documents in his duffel bag, and he has no problem to show them. 

Sansa studies them carefully. She is so close to Jon that she can hear the encouraging warmth that spreads from him, his breath that cools the base of her neck when he bends down to look at the cards. With one eye she sees his profile hardened by doubt, by a hope that is almost painful to watch. What he really hopes? Sansa knows the desires of his heart, she knows at what he aspires. Recognition. Approval. Not to be a broken man, divided in half between what he is and what he wanted to be.

If what Tyrion tells is true, this changes everything. The family that they have become, the house that they rebuilt together. The foundations of all their work is undermined by the legitimacy of his birth. _If you're not my brother, what will be left to me once that this Queen wants you for herself? And even so, how can I ask you to give up your dreams just because I don’t want to lose you?_  

She doesn’t realize that her hand trembles, not until Jon squeezes it, reassuring.  

Tyrion follows the exchange as if by their reaction depends the resolution of an idea that he has had.  

The documents are authentic. There are letters and fragments of official acts confirming that a marriage took place in Dorne in secret and the birth of an heir.

"How did you get them?" Jon wonders. Paradoxically, despite his initial anger, she seems the most affected by the news. She is the most anxious about what it entails.  

"The emissary that we have sent to Dorne has made the appropriate questions to the right people and his little birds did the rest."  

Sansa swallows her dismay. "So now you have also Dorne, in addition to the Greyjoy House." 

Tyrion nods. "And House Tyrell. Fortuitously wanted that Lady Olenna Tyrell was a guest. The Queen of Thorns is determined to get revenge. A feeling that I imagine for you is easy to share." 

It is indeed. "What does your Queen think about Jon? Doesn’t she fear that he can claim the throne as his?" 

"I must admit, my lady, that my Queen has no opinion about it since I have not seen fit to inform her." 

She turns up her nose, wary. "This is all the faithfulness that you have toward your Queen?"

"My loyalty," he seriously backfires, "lies above all in the vows that I contract before with my wife." 

"I'm not your wife. Have you not been warned? I am a widow, though not as miserable as the title would suggest." 

"Even in those circumstances, the fact remains that I have a debt to you prior to that taken with my Queen and I intend to honor it." 

"Betraying the same Queen whom you have sworn to serve? Lying to her?" she insists. Judging Tyrion’s grimace, Sansa knows she has hit the mark. 

"Compromise is not a betrayal if it doesn’t hurt anyone. And here's the real reason I'm here. I didn’t come only as a representative of the Queen, but as a friend and as a friend I propose to you a convenient solution for both sides. An arranged marriage.” 

Sansa feels the earth crumble from under her feet, and soon finds solace in Ghost’s identical anger. Its eyes are fixed on her and are reduced to two red crescents filled with concern. The touch of Jon, his arm around her waist, brings her back to reality, but not enough to quiet the rush of her fury. She would like to scratch and bite, and the apology in Tyrion's eyes doesn’t appease her.

"You have to be a fool, my lord. Jon would never marry a member of the family who has dishonored his mother."

 _Why not?_ The reasonable part of her, the one that was not blinded by jealousy, can understand the prudence of such a union. Just as Elia Martell, given in a political marriage to a Targaryen to unify the Seven Kingdoms. Jon should sacrifice his happiness on the altar of responsibility? No matter how right sounds, Sansa will never allow it. Jon deserves something more than an arranged marriage. If there is a modicum of justice in the world, in the eyes of the old gods and the new ones, Jon deserves a life of light. 

"I must have misspoke," Tyrion tells contritely. "It was not my intention to recommend a wedding with my Queen, but to suggest a marriage between the two of you."  

The words seep slowly into her head, barely make their way.  

"Marry Sansa?" There is no horror in Jon’s face, only puzzlement. "She's my sister!"  

Tyrion shakes his head gently. "Not anymore."  

 _Yes_ , Sansa thinks. _Now they are cousins_. The last link with the past, mercilessly severed with a sharp pair of scissors.

"Jon, let's move into my solar." Her voice is toneless to her own ears. "My lord, you will remain here. Ghost will keep you company." As weak sounds, her voice leaves no way to opposition.

 

* * *

 

"It is madness." Jon swoops down on a chair as soon as they set foot in the solar.

Sansa remains standing. She is not sure that, once seated, would be able to get up again. She has to prove to be firm, impenetrable. She will not be a Queen, but she's Sansa Stark. Inside her flows wolf’s blood and ice.

When Jon repeats that the whole situation is crazy and the Imp is a fool, Sansa has now regained control of herself. She has explored the options and decided what to do, the course of action to be taken. "Tyrion is right."

"Is he?" Jon asks, as if unable to believe his ears.

 _We have to get married_. She cannot say it.

Jon precedes her. "I saw the way he looked at you. And I saw the way you looked at him."

She is too tired to turn around the question. She prefers to deal with it head on. "And how we looked at each other?"

Jon shows a moment of hesitation. "With love."

“With love,” she repeats. “Yes. I love him."

Jon holds his breath, but Sansa gives him no opportunity to respond. "I love him, but not in the way you think. I am grateful to him because he protected me when I thought no one would ever did. I was alone and scared. I thought I didn’t have anyone in the world who cared about me. I was rude to him, but he has always treated me with kindness and affection, even when I didn’t deserve them. In a way he reminds me father. If you look like him at all, Tyrion reminds me him in the way he looks at me. With love, yes, but not the kind of love that a man has for his wife. It’s the love of a father for his daughter or that of an uncle for his favorite nephew."

Thank the gods, Jon seems convinced. He sighs. "I'm sorry. I didn’t mean... it wasn’t an accusation." 

"You have nothing to be sorry, Jon. I married worst men. Tyrion is a good man, but not the man who father would have chosen for me." 

"And what kind of man he would have chosen?" 

 _Someone who's brave and gentle and strong._ Sansa takes a deep breath and looks at him sweetly and determinate. "Someone like you." 

Jon's eyes widen. "You cannot be serious."

"I am."

"We are not forced to - whatever the Imp said or is written on those papers, we shouldn’t do that, Sansa."

 _Oh, Jon. Don’t you see?_ The impulse to embrace him is so strong that Sansa is already taking the first step toward him, before stopping. She sticks her nails into her palms. "We must. Not only for the North, but to defend ourselves."

"We need not decide now." It is so obvious that he's trying to buy time. He too must have begun to see the reasonableness of that solution, the countless positive effects. "We need to talk about this with someone. Ser Davos or maybe Brienne."

"No, we don’t." If he hopes she will change her mind, he is wrong. "This is our life. This is our home, our future. I'm tired of letting others make decisions for me. Are you not?"

"You are my sister," says Jon with a cracked voice. He has tears in his eyes.

"Not anymore," she says sorrowfully, repeating Tyrion’s words. "Not for a long time."

"I cannot be a Targaryen." Jon's pupils are dilated, there is a desperate plea in them.

"And you will not be." Sansa grazes his cheek gently. She fears that he will retract at the contact, disgusted by it. "You can be a Stark."

Jon looks at her like no one has ever looked at her before. Not with desire, not as an obsession, not as a ghost, not with awe frankly ridiculous. He looks at her as if he found in her a completion, the best part of himself. When he takes her wrist and turns his face to follow the movement, her heart misses a beat. She smiles when he touches the palm of her hand with his lips, a kiss full of respect and devotion. 

"I love you as Jon," she finds herself whisper. "I can love you as my husband. I can make you happy." 

"You can for sure. As long as we can be together. Aye," Jon appears exhausted, but he has come to terms with his demons. "If it is the only way to protect you, I'll marry you."

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

Tyrion was unequivocal. So that both could be regarded as completely safe, it was necessary that anyone in the Seven Kingdoms were convinced that their marriage had taken place and has already been consumed by many months. The secrecy was essential. Everyone had to believe they were lovers since the Battle against Ramsay Bolton, that they had discovered the truth about Jon’s birth and that from that time their relationship had changed irrevocably.

Jon had immediately shown contrast to that project and had been more than reluctant to bring it to fruition. "It would make us liars, Sansa. There is no dignity in that." And everything about him was unyielding, starting from the shoulders contracted and wrinkled forehead and ending with the stubbornness in his stiff jaw.

And so they would be newlyweds.

Sansa had shared his point of view and Tyrion was left to shake his head, mulling and without doubt cursing Stark’s incorruptibility vein that even a fake arranged marriage had not managed to scratch.

Jon had been clear on another point. The Lords would be informed as soon as possible and the reasons for the hasty marriage would be brought to light so that no one felt insulted by their furtive act or dared to doubt the good intentions that had led them to that step. In this regard, it was necessary that other people were made aware of the plan, witnesses who would attest the act’s irrefutable correctness, ready to defend them in case of need. "I propose Ser Davos," Jon had said.

Sansa had nodded approvingly. "And I propose Lady Brienne and Lady Mormont."

"Lady Mormont?" Jon’s amazement was as transparent as the cold morning light.

She had thought about the little girl who watched brutally the world with the ruthlessness of a heart tree, strict but fair. That didn’t allow second chances, and whose friendship, once lost, was impossible to renew. The girl that sometimes, in her declared aversion to the affectations and refinement typically feminine, was as Arya called from the mists of the past. "Lady Mormont is your biggest supporter, but she could turn into your worst detractor if we lost her appreciation. This will be the proof of our trust in her and will serve to ensure definitively whether it is well placed."

It was a dangerous game, Tyrion had warned them.

Both were adamant. Nothing of what he had said or had avoided saying for prudence had been able to bring them to reason.

Sansa looks at her reflection in the mirror, but she doesn’t make any of the adjustments that until a year ago she would have considered essential before exiting from her rooms and appear in public. _What a silly, vain little doll I was._

She wise under her fingers the rough texture of the fabric that she wears and compares it with the richness and elaborate embroidery of the clothes she wore to her first marriage and then the second. Elegant clothes, worthy of a princess, coaxing to capture the look and dazzle, to mask the deception and lure the gullible. The simple linearity gown she's wearing doesn’t bother her, on the contrary it is a pleasant change. It seems auspicious.

The instinct moves her hands and on impulse, with practical gestures, she melts most of her braids, except for one.  

“You look like your mother, Lady Sansa."

Behind her, the tall figure of Brienne is towering over her, familiar and dear as it once was dear to her only that of her parents.

"And it's a bad thing?" She dosn’t know it anymore.

Brienne rests a hand on her shoulder. She is not a person open to confidences, she doesn’t appreciate the physical contact that feels like a weakness. The gesture, in its integrity, is steeped in the dedication with which she has sworn to serve, the promise that from now on will always be her sword to stand between her and the nightmares that populate her nights.

“Only if you you let it become so, my lady."

With eyes clouded by memories, Sansa remembers a fragment of an old conversation.

_"Do you know why my mother is dead?"_

_The sadness of Brienne as something powerful and vivid, a patch of soft color that had glimmered in the white of the surrounding woods._

_"Because of too much love," was her response, quiet as a prayer uttered in front of a tomb. As damnation and redemption._

"Lady Mormont is outside. Awaits permission to talk with you.”

For Sansa it is hard to believe. Lady Mormont does not wait for anyone and she would be impatient even in the day of judgment, in front of the Stranger himself.

"Send her in," she says. When Brienne moves to obey, Sansa recalls her with a soft ‘Thank you’.

The other woman smiles at her in the way she only gives to those whom she loves, reserved and almost shy. She has a smile that cannot be seen unless you are very familiar with her, and that, in the rare cases in which it occurs, softens her hardened face. "You are welcome, my lady."

"Can I ask you one last favor? Could you go to Jon to make sure he's fine?"

"As you wish."

 

* * *

 

 

Poised and authoritative, with a temper forged in Valyrian steel and a biting tongue, although so young, Lyanna Mormont has already made the most of the skill with which she takes tolls through her discernment.

_I was not much bigger than her when I saw Ilyn Payne decapitate father.  And all I have done then has been passing out and dig my eyes for too many tears._

She, unlike her, held up her House, defended herself and her name. She does not let herself manipulate by events. Sansa can only admire her fortitude.

"My Lady," greets her, her back to the mirror that does not reflect anything except falsified images and distorted copies.

“Your Grace.”

Cold, lethal, her greeting does not resemble at all the reverent one that she is used to extend to Jon. Not that Sansa is really amazed by this. Why should she respect her, after all? The opinion that she has of her was clear. She considers her the weak link of the pack, survived by chance.

She wants to tell her she does not want that title, she has never been interested in it. All she wants is Jon, have a unique place in the consideration of him whose esteem for her is worth more than any crown.

"I admit that I was initially disappointed at this marriage’s prospect."

Again, Sansa thinks, why shouldn’t she?

"But I'm not anymore."

"Why?" Sansa raises her eyebrows.

"Because I've observed you. I saw the fury with which you have committed to rebuilding Winterfell, the honesty with which you serve the King and the North. Fighting against ghosts is much more difficult than fighting the living. You are a warrior, Sansa Stark. You will be a fierce queen."

Sansa tightens her lips and gives her a nod of gratitude, troubled. "I will be, if I have your support."

"Here we stand," she says, taking her family’s words. Her smile is a promise of complicity for the future. "Together." 

 

* * *

 

Lady Brienne looks at him with a frown and Jon feels like an idiot. "What did you say?"

Behind him he hears at the same time a sigh, a laugh and a curse coming respectively from Davos, Tyrion Lannister and Tormund.

Lady Brienne throws all three men a murderous look of warning. "Lady Sansa has sent me to make sure that you were well."

"I'm fine," he croaks.

"Like a wolf in a cage," Tyrion says. He seems to have found pleasure in tormenting him.

Tormund’s laugh echoes the room like the barking of a stray dog. "Good one!"

Tyrion smiles, showing his teeth.

"Your Grace," Brienne perseveres, stubborn as her lady.

"I said I'm fine!"

"And we see it," Tyrion intervenes with the delicacy that has made him. “Don’t we?”

Jon yields. He emits a choking that looks alarmingly close to the groan of a dying animal. "How can I be fine? I am to marry my sister!"

“I thought the point was that she is not his sister," Tormund says, disoriented. "That's not why he marries her?"

The look of blatant distaste Brienne reserves him, at any other time, would snatch laughter from Jon.

"What is the real problem?" Tyrion asks. The absent-mindedness of a moment before replaced by a hint of boredom and impatience.

"Sansa deserves more than what I can give her." Jon spits the truth with difficulty.

"This is not true!" Brienne tells at the same moment when Tyrion says, "It is true."

“It’s true,” Tyrion repeated, regardless of the woman’s hostility. "And I agree but the lady did not seem to share this idea otherwise she would not accept."

"It is because she does not know what she is getting."

The Imp snorts and rubs his nose. "Someone would object this after two marriages." Anticipating his angry jerk, he raises a hand. "Spare me. I know what you Stark are capable to defend the virtues of your women. You are worse than a disaster."

"Your Grace." It is the first time that Davos takes an active part in the conversation. "What concern ails you? Is a matter of conscience?"

Jon exhales a long sigh and his shoulders sag. He feels drained, tired, confused. That day will never end? "In part," he confesses, dismal.

Davos nods with an air of understanding. "You have reason to believe that you will make Lady Sansa unhappy? That you will treat her disrespectfully?"

“What?” Jon stares at him, bewildered. "Of course not!"

"Do you fear that she hates you?"

Jon does not respond and a collective sigh escapes from every man and woman present.

"You fool," Tyrion accuses him with eyes flaming in irritation. "What do you think that push her to marry you?"

“Duty,” Jon replies spontaneously, without hesitation.

Tyrion winces. "Then you're really a fool and she more than you."

"I know," he speaks under his breath as the voice of Ygritte, mixed with another that amazingly resembles Sansa’s, whispers in his ear her favorite lullaby. _You know nothing, Jon Snow_. "How is she?" He inquires Brienne.

"She is very calm."

Calm, not happy. He is attacked again by guilt. What is he doing? How can he believed it was right?

Someone knocks at the door and Jon’s heart sinks. It is the moment. 

 

* * *

 

 

Sansa fixes her skirts in a gesture that preserves the flavor of an old life.

Brienne hands her arm to her. Although her appearance is not noble nor as charming as in the songs that once she adored, Sansa finds it all the more noble and beautiful in her atypical nature. Brienne is unique, something extraordinary. And she has the privilege of having this woman at her service, companion -in-arms in the less canonical meanings.

They are almost arrived at the Goodswood when Podrick reaches them coming running, out of breath and with a case in his hands.

"They were not among the leaves that accumulate between the suckers of the pits and I had to dig under the hedges of rosemary and sage, but in the end I found them, my lady, my ser -lady!"

"What are you talking about?"

Podrick’s smile is beyond measure. "Fireflies." He sketches a bow to Sansa and for once he does to perfection. "My wedding gift to enlighten your path."

The glow of Podrick’s fireflies breaks through the thick darkness of the winter night. It does not snow, she is not dressed in white and Brienne has no flashlight.

When they emerge from the path, it’s not the ghost of the husband that she killed to welcome her. It is Jon’s serious face, his kindly smile that opens wide to see her, smoothing his forehead from wrinkles  of apprehension.

Sansa smiles. She smiles even when Lady Lyanna comes forward for the ritual questions. She smiles and never stops until the end.  

 

* * *

 

Sansa is so beautiful that she doesn’t seem real, like a dream or a song. She is as beautiful as Lady Stark when he watched her in secret, unseen, as she smiled at Robb or father. Jon makes a face. No, not father, but uncle. It is not as it should be? Which will be from now on?

Sansa advances like the queen that she is, under a starry sky and in the middle of the fireflies off-season, escorted by the most unlikely of all knights. Ghost to her right and to her left Brienne.

The red of her hair shines like the ruby that Melisandre wore around her neck, but not with the same sinister twinkle. It’s the color of the blood of the enemies he faced and defeated, the color that was dripping from Ramsay Bolton’s split lip after his first punch, the color of the stream that trickled from Rickon after being pierced by the first arrow. It is the color of defeat as victory. But it is also the color of Ghost’s eyes, of his favorite apples and is a color that he has always loved, for reasons that are far away and that he doesn’t even thinks he remembers.

And suddenly, in Sansa’s eyes, he seems to glimpse a glimmer of hope.         .

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Initially this story was to be a one-shot, but your reactions so warm, comments, kudos (so much, really!) and an inspiration that had not come to see me for a long time have spurred me to continue. I had decided to finish with the third chapter, but immediately after that, other scenes began to hit my imagination and so I continued to write without knowing the final, trusting the instinct that said 'go ahead'. And so, here I am. With another chapter and the faintest idea what to do. Forgive the time that elapses between the publication of the chapters. I'm not a native speaker and so I write straight off, in both English and my language, then translate what I need to translate. So also forgive the errors or if possible reported them to me, I would be grateful! I hope you'll enjoy this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thank you!

Sansa perceives that Jon is awake when she feels him extricate himself from her embrace and turning on his side, shun the heat of their bodies entwined.

In the awakening comes consciousness, the memory of what is real. The awakening shows the authenticity of their relationship in the complexity of its dualism. In the filtered glow of dawn and at the lark’s song, he rejects her with the same absoluteness with which instead he seeks her in sleep when, in the anonymity of the dark and in the oblivion offered by sleep, their breathing become one, their beats are coordinated and Sansa no longer understands where Jon starts and where she ends.

They are lovers, accomplices, free to be happy. Yet only at night it is granted them to be, not otherwise.

Once again he rolled away. As if her closeness repelled him, it was something he should be ashamed. Every time it happens, hurts like the first time. And it's always, always like that. Every day, every day. It’s so since he agreed to marry her. They have shared the bed of the Lord’s bedchamber for three months now.

She keeps her eyes closed, her breath steady and her limbs relaxed. Something heavy and intense moves from her chest to stomach, a lump of regret and disappointment that slips in the rest of her body.

Pretend to be asleep is the only way she can freely show the pleasure that the bare contact causes her. Skin against skin, her notoriously cold against his hot, the essence of jasmine with which she dabs her hair mixed with the smell unique and unmistakable that only belongs to Jon: the remedy with which every evening he rubs the muscles sore from training with the sword, leather, moss and heather and a woody fragrance of trees that remains also in the fur of Ghost.

She knows that iron is odorless, but shall possess one, it would be marked in Jon’s pale scars. It is the smell of sweat and dust, the effort and perseverance of the warrior.

This morning, Sansa cannot hold herself or be diligent. During the daylight hours, the precaution that Jon uses to her is poison, his dose of attention and his dedication to her is a slow and languid death. Usually she restrains the desire for her husband, a discipline of which she has become mistress, but now a mischievous feeling agitates her between the sheets.

Simply, she refuses to accommodate him. She holds him against her, tying her arms around his hips.

Jon stiffens, but he does not retract. He thinks she's still asleep. It must be the only explanation for that concession out of the ordinary. Jon is all too careful to respect her space, to keep decorous distances.

Slowly, a supplement to the torture of having him close without actually having him, Jon loosens her grip and gently but firmly makes her change position.

When she feels his lips linger on her temple, Sansa must use every ounce of will to avoid throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him as she has dreamt of doing for weeks. She remains motionless, waiting, hoping, praying.

Jon rests a cupped hand on her cheek and his fiery breath caresses her eyelids while his thumb touches her lower lip. Every part of her burns like a freshly inflicted wound.

 _Jon_.

He tucks his fingers through her hair, takes a lock and brings it to his face. She hears him inhale and then issue a deep sigh, unmistakable. It _is_ of pleasure, it _must be_  of pleasure.

 _Jon_.

He sticks his nose in the corner between her shoulder and throat, his hand supporting her nape, while with the other massages the base of her back.

 _Jon_.

He kisses the curve of her collarbone, chin, jaw, cheekbones and then comes dangerously close to kiss her mouth.

"Jon," she moans aloud involuntarily, arching her back up, moving her pelvis against his.

His reaction is instantaneous. His hands, his lips, the warmth of his body immediately disappear and in their place remains cold air, a feeling of emptiness and despair.

Sansa would cry in frustration. 

 

* * *

 

As she passes, the servants direct to her deferential nods.

The Lords listen with growing consideration every word she utters. It gets to the point where more and more often they require her opinion on the relevant issues. During the sessions of council they present the facts not addressing solely to the King, no longer. They soon learned that behind the Lady of Winterfell’s attractiveness there is a sharp and lively intellect, that her gaze is more far-sighted in anticipating the underhand work of a diplomatic move. She is no stranger to the intrigue that is the basis of politics. Grooming is an art that she has mastered as she did with the embroidery during childhood.

They call her Queen. Not because she is the wife of their king, but as a form of homage. She has earned their respect and Jon could not be more proud of her.

Sansa is a formidable queen, zealous and diligent towards their subjects. She deals with the domestic aspect of the castle with a firm hand, knows every detail of the trend of their properties, dusts off the old memories to bring back Winterfell to the majestic grandeur and original comfort. Preserves the traditions, but not at the expense of progress. She is open to innovation, where it is just and reasonable.

She passes through the corridors and the balconies, crosses the rooms renovated with a nimble gait. She is indefatigable. She can be seen everywhere, always moving. Her presence is required regularly, seems necessary to everyone. Whether the cook or an administrator, a servant or a maid, she is never alone. There is always someone with her to bring to her attention a certain situation, to request her authorization or her intervention to resolve the delicate nature of a problem.

Her sinuous profile is accompanied by that of Brienne, of Podrick or of one of the guards. He attends her talking with Ser Davos of commerce, safely expose her ideas on buying and selling of consumer goods. He sees her laugh at Tormund’s dirty jokes. Exchanging smiles with Brienne and Lady Mormont, congratulate Podrick for his progress as he trains in the yard with the others men.

Jon watches her from afar and is fascinated by her.

 

* * *

 

They have been married for a month when he makes a shocking discovery. He married a stranger.

The woman that sits on a bench deliberately placed at the right side of the throne has clear and unbiased eyes. She is tall and proud and has nothing of the frivolous and capricious sister that he remembers, nothing besides the fiery red of her hair. She seems born from winter, born to reign.

If Jon had not seen with his own eyes her scold some children that were climbing on the broken tower behind the old inner ward, intertwined her own hair for the exasperation of the serving girl who reproaches her for being too independent, her get out of the crypts head bowed, her feed Ghost with innards, he would not believe at all that she is the same person.

One day Ser Davos approaches him on one of the balconies and follows the direction of his gaze.

Sansa is in the courtyard and she is offering refreshments to the workers who help them in rebuilding.

"She looks happy, your grace."

Jon nods. "Aye. She does, doesn’t she?"

He is taken aback by the revelation. Sansa is really happy. Her laughter begins to be felt on a frequent basis. She appears serene, satisfied. She sings in the morning and in the evening, with the flowers that are given as gifts to her regularly, she creates garlands and then, laughing, she rests these on the head of Ghost and on his like a game. Her basket of mending is always full. No more decorative stitching. She sews out of needs, but if necessary she is able to hide the poverty and misery with ornamental compositions. She treasures her knowledge and she is useful to others in any way she can provide.

And little by little, Jon learns about his wife as, he will then account, has never known her when she was still his sister. (He does not know it yet, but the last thing he will learn is that she loves him.)

 

* * *

 

The second step is a natural and unavoidable consequence. Not easy to welcome.

Find out that he wants her is destabilizing. And if in the first night of their marriage the mutual embarrassment was something sustainable, to want her is an insurmountable obstacle. For him it is unacceptable. It seems perverse and wicked.

Their bed has turned into a battlefield.

Jon wakes up like a prey surrounded by hunters. Her scent is everywhere, intoxicating and sensual. Sansa’s soft arms are wrapped around his waist, her long legs are placed sideways over his. The smell of her is the smell of winter, its exact transposition.

He recalls that she used fragrances specially bought from street vendors: combinations and plants hard to find in the North.

Now she surrounds herself with everything that is home with the same determination with which she as a young girl had tried to be a perfect Southern lady. The harshness of northmen do not scare her. They are surly, abrupt and she admires their candor, their honesty, the strong and harsh sound of their jargon. The South has changed her. Sansa was a delicate flower, kept under a glass bell. Now the flower has become a head of inviting buds, protected by thorns and ice.

The first time he is assailed by nightmares, Sansa reassures him with kisses and caresses. "Shhh." A kiss and then another, cold hands that deviate the hair from his face congested, cleanse the sweat. "You’re at home now. They can no longer reach you. It's all over." And he understands that it is a reminder for her as for him.

 

* * *

 

"Can I help you?"

He has not heard her enter.

Ghost looks up and Sansa, kneeling, scratches the direwolf between the ears and rests a kiss on its nose. She turns to look at him over her shoulder, still stroking its fur. She repeats the question and Jon realizes that he did not respond to her, as he was fascinated by the sight of her.

"I would not want you dirty yourself."

He has not had time to clean up the mud. The comparison with her appearance, immaculate and elegant, is demeaning.

Sansa liquids his reply with a resolute gesture. "Nonsense."

She gets up from the floor and shakes her skirts to remove dust and fur. In a flash she is behind him.

Suddenly uncomfortable, he takes off his tunic. It is not the first time he is shirtless in her presence. He had to accept the fact that she wants to be present when the Maester stitches his wounds, no matter how minor they may be. ("It is not necessary, Sansa," he had said the first time. Sansa had tightened her lips and she had spoke directly to the Maester, ignoring him. "From now on, if my husband is hurt, you will inform me at once." Jon'n jaw had dropped. She has been adamant. "I will remain.") That she helps him to wash, although he would prefer the opposite. (She had taken the can of hot water and had sent away the servant. "I will assist the king." "It is not necessary that you do it, Sansa," Jon had said wearily. "I am your wife." "Aye. And you're the lady of this house. This is why you should not do it." Her gaze, identical to that of Ygritte, and its meaning so similar. _You know nothing, Jon Snow._ Perhaps they were right. Even now.)

He now knows how it is useless try to convince Sansa to don't do something she has set.

“No more 'It is not necessary, Sansa'?" she teases.

Jon feels a laugh blossom within him and comes to his lips, in spite of everything. "Would it help?"

She shrugs. "Obviously not."

The smell of the remedy, a mixture of apple cider vinegar with a sprig of mint, stings his nose.

Sansa begins to rub it on the sore spot. She did often enough to know what knots of tension dissolve, what are the points to be pressed.

A pleasant silence reigns in the room, comfortable. Jon doesn't feel the need to fill it and probably not even Sansa. He enjoys the delicious sensation of massage until it becomes disturbing for how distracts him.

"Why do you do?" The question arises spontaneously, curiously, before he was able to push it in the depths of himself as he usually does.

Why she is so caring, that's what he intends to say. He wants to know if it is the duty to push her or the reasons are others. If there is a chance, a tiny, inconceivable one, that maybe she does because she wants to. If she waits like him, with the same devouring impatience, that the evening comes for those rare moments of intimacy and sharing.

"Because I'm your wife."

(If he has been more attentive to details, he would catch the slight trembling of her hands, her effort to touch him without touching more than what is necessary, not pushing the limits of propriety.)

That is the answer of all time, the explanation to everything that she does when it comes to him and for the first time, Jon does not find it satisfactory.

Sansa must have noticed his irritation from the new strain that has now joined his back. "Jon?"

"If you wanted so desperately to be someone's wife, then you shouldn't have married me." He hears that she holds her breath, but does not turn around to check.

"Turn around, Jon. Turn around and face me when we talk."

Jon obeys and the bewilderment in her face makes him instantly regret what he has said.

"Do you seriously think what you said?"

Yes, yes, he really thinks it. How could it be otherwise? "No."

"Liar." Sansa’s smile is one without humor. She looks destroyed. Where is her energy? "Why did you marry me, Jon?"

Why? He fell silent. Why, she asks. Does not she remember why? "Because it was the right thing to do." It becomes clear that it was the wrong thing to say, or at least, not the one she had hoped to hear. "And you?"

Her bitter grimace has a melancholy air. "Despite what you think, I didn’t want to get married to have a husband to show off. I'm not that kind of woman, or rather, not anymore. I didn’t want to be _someone's_ wife. I wanted to be _your_ wife. And I was hoping, all this time I had hoped that you wanted the same. But of course I was wrong. You don’t want me. You don’t want anything from me. This is why you never let me touch you? Is it because I disgust you?"

No, it is not so. She doesn't disgusts him. How, when she is the only beautiful thing in his life, the only thing that has remained intact in a sea of ash and scrap? But exactly for this reason, because she is so dear and precious to him, that's why he cannot have her, cannot spoil the one good thing that he owns.

Sansa stands up and her defeat posture breaks his heart. "What I told you the night when we got married, that I would have loved you like a husband, do youremember? It was true. And since then, I did. I loved you as a husband."

It is too much to bear. Jon grabs her before she runs away. He takes her face in his hands and kisses her with transport, vehemently, with all those feelings that he has repressed for days, weeks, months. Endless nights of suffering and pure agony. The desire of her is heartbreaking. Her flavor is unsustainably sweet. The inside of her mouth tastes like juniper liqueur and the apple pie that was for dinner. Flower, pansy or perhaps jasmine is on her skin.

"Jon," she groans, piercing his hair. He breaks away from her reluctantly.

Sansa breathes heavily, her lips swollen from too many kisses, her cheeks flushed. The way she looks at him makes him feel invincible.

"I love you," he says. Say it is so easy that he wonders why it took him so long. "You know I do."

Judging by her reaction, no, she had no idea. The hope has failed, collapsed, deleted. The confident expectation has found the realization of her aspiration. Sansa touches his cheek, still incredulous for what has happened, but patient. She seems to understand his difficulties, the impediment that makes everything so complicated. The ghosts of the past. "But you cannot accept it. Not yet."

He rests his forehead against hers, squeezes her neck. He gives her another soft kiss. "You were my sister. And now you're my wife. The vow to love and honor you is not a commitment that I take lightly."

"Neither I. What can I do? I want to help you, Jon, but I cannot if you prevent me."

"It is a path that I have to do alone."

"But you're not alone anymore. You know that, right?"

He turns her hand and presses his lips on the open palm, in the reply of the kiss of those months ago. "Aye." The affection, the exultation in his voice is palpable and safe. "I'm not alone anymore."

 


	5. Chapter 5

Anyone who has a pair of eyes has noticed the change existing between the King and the Queen of the North. The crescent harmony of their movements, a balance that can only come from intimacy.

Touching is growing in their relationship when previously there was none, the contact was avoided or reduced to minimum. Now kisses on temples and caresses take place on a regular basis. It seems to have stepped back in time when both of them were so grateful to have found each other to believe it a sort of miracle.

The audacity of their bodies’ proximity, however, has nothing of brotherly and so the feral air with which they stiffen or quiver at the slightest touch of the other, believing that at the rest of the world this act goes unnoticed.

Tormund’s jokes abound, as well as Lady Brienne’s apprehension, mindful of the violence endured by her young lady in the past.

When Ser Davos discovers them in the armory in a compromising attitude, they are so focus into their mutual presence that they do not notice him. He quietly closes the door, careful to not reveal himself, but remains outside until he hears they recompose themselves. Only then he walks away.

He promises himself to make a speech to the King about demeanor and discretion, but that night, in the great hall, the radiance of Lady Sansa shines so strong that dazzles even the observer less attentive among those present. The looks that the White Wolf throws to his wife express a deep-seated and unconditional feeling that he is acquainted with all too well. So he decides to defer. He remembers his Marya and his boys.

 _Let them be young and carefree, let them find a form of happiness in the midst of this devastation_ , he prays to the gods all, both old and new.

Besides them who is more deserving of a little peace? The war is upon Winterfell with its feverish preparations and even in the halo of authentic joy that they radiate without realizing it, both the king and the queen are burdened by fatigue. But they are young and energetic and in the end will triumph. It is time to make way for new generations.

 

* * *

 

The missives from Dragonstone have increased exponentially. Daenerys is determined to march to King's Landing as soon as possible.

Thanks to Ser Davos’s accurate descriptions, Sansa can imagine the small figure of the woman while standing in the Chamber of the Painted Table she plots his conquest as once Aegon the Conqueror did before her in the same room.

It is necessary to act with knowledge, but moderation is not a field in which their future queen seems to excel. It is part of her, is in her blood and in the words of her house. No matter the merciful queen that she will be in the future or that she has been in the Slaver Cities, now she is on a war footing. She is itching for battle and revenge.

Sansa can understand her restlessness, why she is raring to start. It can be said that the woman has waited for this moment all her life and now that it is coming, time proceeds unbearably slow. It has not even been a year since she was in the same situation. One step away from home yet intolerably distant.

Dragons breathing columns of fire from their deep ravines, dead armies led by a king skeleton. This is the turn that took her life, these are the conflicts that await her on the horizon. These are the songs she loved, before discovering how painful was to live in them.

Daenerys begins to lose patience. Jon’s detailed letters, together with Tyrion’s certainty, have persuaded her that the real enemy is not locked up in the blood fortress in the south, but beyond the ice’s wall where soon he will breach.

She commands their call-up, without civilize the intimidating tone or screen her intentions behind façade’s courtesies. After the fraudulent refinement of her past experiences, Sansa esteems her frankness, however brutal it may seem at first.

Daenerys has a relentless and categorical nature, but it is a sin of pride that she can afford. She knows what is capable of and how far can go, what it is right to do in the name of truce without compromising her ideals.

Sansa cannot help but reflect on the only message the woman wrote in her own hand and not by her scribe.

_'Twice I was a bride and both were out of a sense of duty to my people, to protect my children. As women we are bound into submission by our loving nature, this is what men would have us believe. What has been joined, no one can divide without compromising its essence, not even a dragon. I have already attempted to reverse the order of things and for this I was cursed. I hope your third duty will be the last and blessed by what you are looking for, Sansa Stark.'_

She begins to ascend slowly the steps leading to the library. The stairwell is particularly steep and narrow.

After many reasoning, she and Jon came to the conclusion that this was the ideal place to conceal the exchange of correspondence with their covenants. Hiding them is becoming difficult. The rumor of their marriage has leaked as they had expected, despite the absence of a wedding banquet. There have not arrived ravens from the Valley for a long time and she lives in a constant state of concern.

Later she will give some of the blame to her distraction, although it is undeniable that the next step is slippery as if someone had covered it with oil or wax.

There is no grip to hold. Sansa curls up on herself, but when the pangs come, the shock hits her by surprise at the head and the chest, on the left hip and elbow. Stunned, she tumbles down, down. The rest is suffering.

 

* * *

 

She regains consciousness at the sound of her name and the word 'love' repeated endlessly. The voice calling her is like the sound of water of a mountain brook. Steady, rhythmical, relaxing. She seems to be drown in a viscous sea of shadows.

"What happened to her?"

It is offered to her a glimmer of reality within the nightmare of her excruciating pain. Jon’s face is close to hers and is devoured by urgency and an indescribable panic, the irrational fear of the dark that is imprinted in children when you put them to bed.

Someone responds. Sansa hears other people talking in fragments. Strong arms raise her from the stone floor, circumscribe her body as to hold her, with a hint of strength to which has been imposed a self-control that the owner is far from feeling. His kindness and tenderness are soul-stirring and the intensified bustle of cries around her dies out in the sorrowful pleading he whispers in her ear.

Her name has never been sweeter.

 

* * *

 

They make her lie down in a supine position.

Measter Henly, who has rushed as soon as possible, slips off her shoes and examines her feet. He palpates lightly her back. "You know how did she fall?"

Facing their grim silence, the man sighs. "The fractures are determined according to the most affected area. For the state in which she was lying, would you say that she has fallen on head or on side?"

The abrupt answer that Jon has already on the tip of the tongue is anticipated by Brienne’s prudent one. "I would say on side." She must have felt the same anxiety when they discovered Sansa, but has kept a cool head even if she had became pallid at the sight of blood. Though her eyes, the only color in her pale face, show the deepness of her fear.

Jon clenches his fists at his sides. No matter whether his eyes are closed or wide open and staring into space, the image of Sansa unconscious doesn’t disappear. He can see her even now: huddled at the foot of the stairs, with a flexed arm in an unnatural bend, a deep cut on her right eyebrow and spots of blood on the step ledge behind her auburn head.

"I have to give her the milk of poppy."

Jon scrutinizes the man with open distrust. "Is it really necessary?"

The patience of the measter evaporates along with the condescension with which he has treated them so far. "It is if you do not intend to hear her scream or cause her more pain than she has already suffered." Something in the man's tone makes clear that he is not referring just to what has just happened.

Jon agrees with a little nod, tight-lipped.

The rough features of the maester are blunt in a severity less crude as he gives attention to his wife. He approaches Sansa, checks her breathing. He feels her pulse and discharges the regularity of the heartbeat, raises her eyelids to inspect the pupils and the presence of broken capillaries. "You shouldn’t have touch nor move her, before I had examined her," he speaks acidly. "In these cases the patient should be transported on a hard, flat surface. You would have had to wait for me."

Sensing the wave of anger ready to overwhelm him, Ghost pushes its muzzle against his arm. It is a silent appeal and manage to calm him down, like Sansa would have done. Jon takes a deep breath. "I acted on impulse. I'm sorry."

"You may have worsened the situation. And to say that you should have a little experience. Such incident had not happened before?" He is talking about Bran.

The expression on his face must be frightening if even Brienne comes forward to stand between him and the man who doesn’t flinch even in front of his murderous rampage.

"Your grace," Brienne calls him coldly. His sudden outburst of rage has alarmed her.

Jon brings his attention on the woman who towers over him. He gives her a glance and she, after a moment of indecision that seems interminable, steps aside. He turns to the man. "You will save her." This is not a request, but an absolute order that assumes an inhumane stretch when he pronounce it, something of the wolf and the death that remained inside him, the end of time and the start of eternity. "You will save the Queen."

Maester Henly clicks his tongue, staring at him derisively. "I would have done it even if you don’t have commanded me. The girl has suffered enough. You don’t know and how, since you weren’t there? Neither you who were his brother nor you that had sworn to protect her even before you know her, nor any of the men who are now behind that door and pretended to be unaware of what was happening in these very rooms." His voice is filled by bitterness, while he alternately pointing Brienne and then the door with a peremptory gesture of the gnarled hand. "But _I_ was there, _I_ saw. Maybe not in person, but you don’t need to imagine certain things when you can find them in the wounds of the body, touching them in broken bones. I hope you will understand, Your Grace, that this is not the first time that I act for her own good and that from now on you will reflect on the hypocrisy of certain defamatory accusations."

"I-" Jon starts.

"Yes, you are really and truly sorry, I bet. Now be quiet for the sake of gods, settle in a corner and be thankful that I allow you to stay after that you not only have undermined the validity of my care, behaving like a young fool, but also have questioned my actions."

 

* * *

 

"The impact of the fall, in addition to external injuries that can be observed, the dislocation of the elbow and the displacement of the basin, caused no permanent damage. Anyone who has made that step slippery, didn’t intend to kill her."

"What do you mean?" Ser Davos enquires, expressing the general bewilderment.

Measter Henly seeks Jon’s eyes like he is waiting for permission to speak freely.

The last hours were terrifying. He stripped his wife for the first time and had to do it in the presence of two spectators who followed his every move with hawk eyes. He thanked Sansa’s state of unconsciousness. Once undressed, when her skin was shown free of any impediment to the amber light of the candles, he couldn’t suppress the shudder of horror that paralyzed him on the spot. A horror that would humiliate her, that would have mortified her. It is not for the old injuries scarring her, raging on an otherwise unblemished skin, but for what they represent, for the stories of abuse they tell. _Where was I when that happened? Where was I, I who had to protect her?_

In the flow of those thoughts obfuscated by hate, maester Henly had moved him and had removed himself the last layers of fabric. Intercepting his need to touch his wife and blocking him, he had sent Jon into a corner. "If I need your help again," he had said gruffly, but not without an unusual dose of sympathy, "I'll let you know."

"Go ahead, maester Henly," Jon authorizes him now, resisting the urge to pass a hand over his face. Even if his distress for Sansa’s illness overcomes his eagerness to know at the moment, the situation requires resolution and strong nerves.

"If they had wanted to cause her irreparable damage, they would have make sure that the fall happened higher up. Then the injures wouldn’t be limited to the limbs and abdomen, but -"

Jon becomes gloomy while understanding makes its way into the minds of those present simultaneously.

"They thought that she was with child," Brienne says with a grimace of incredulous disgust.

"She wasn’t," he replies, unable to restrain himself. Predictably, now everyone is staring at him, speechless.

"How can you be sure, your grace?" Maaster Henly arches an eyebrow. "Last time I checked, you weren’t a maester."

"I just know," he grunts.

Ser Davos tightens his lips, as if he is hiding a smile.

Tormund looks at him agape, like a man raised from the dead for the second time. "You two didn’t fuck! You didn’t do it! That’s why!"

Brienne strangely doesn’t seem upset by the lack of manners and the use of vulgar interlocution. She merely sniffs. "Really?" She asks with a funny expression.

"How is that possible?" Even Lady Lyanna is baffled. Jon can’t decide what he finds more puzzling, that a girl of ten is reproaching him for not having consummated his marriage yet, or the fact that this girl and Arya are as like as two peas.

"The She-bear is right! What's wrong with you? When the Red Woman rose you from the grave, your cock didn’t recover? Doesn’t get hard for the crow queen or-"

"You don’t speak of my lady in those inappropriate terms." Brienne’s fingers creak ominously.

Tormund looks at her with an adoring air. Winks. "I was talking about his cock, but do it your way, sweetling. His cock _will_  be part of your lady, in one way or another."

"You, depraved, disgusting-"

"Was this Lord Baelish's doing?" Podrick intervenes.

"Why do you think that?" Ser Davos asks, the first to recover from the unexpected question.

"If I loved a woman like he does, as an obsession, and if I found out that she's with another man, I would wait for the right time to take her back. And if I were afraid that she is - that she aspects - yes, in short, if I thought _that_ , then I would look for a way to get rid of the new obstacle, right?" Podrick mumbles.

There is a pause of silence. "Brilliant, boy," Ser Davos tells with an appreciative tone, patting him on the shoulder.

"So," Lady Lyanna recaps, "this was an admonishment?"

"No," Jon answers with animosity that transfigures his voice, looking toward the closed door of the Lord’s bedchamber, where Sansa rests with Ghost at the foot of their bed. "It was a reminder."

"How will you react, Your Grace?" Lady Lyanna asks and Jon recognizes the expectation in her sharp eyes.

"With our reminder. The North remembers."


	6. Chapter 6

The room is empty, with the exception of Jon. In the pale light of the candle his face has an honest and frank profile. On the table there are an empty bottle and a goblet that Jon views with a blank look.

"Jon."

When he turns around, that look becomes a sad one.

 _So sad_ , Sansa think. She would like to beg forgiveness with tears in her eyes. Was he always like that, even in the past? There was always that sadness in him or maybe before she was unable to see it?

In the silence of the night she tries to figure out what time it is. In the distance a howl echoes. The hour of the wolf. It is not of Ghost, but is familiar enough to make her shut her eyes with regret. She thinks nostalgically about Lady. It is on nights like those, in those quiet much more than in those bloody, that she would like her back to her side. It is to fill the voids that her absence is felt most. "Is it raining?"

"No, just a few drops." Jon takes the goblet, he put it down and then picks it up again.

She tightens her lips and clears her throat. "Give me a drop of wine, please."

"You shouldn’t in your condition."

She makes a forced laugh to break the tension that reigns between them. "I would say that I'm allowed considering that I almost died." 

"Don't say that!" He went red in the face with anger and hits the table hard enough to make it wobble and so risking to overthrow what is above. 

Sansa maintains a calm and composed attitude to hide the turmoil she feels. 

"I ask your forgiveness," he speaks with an air of contriction. "Give me a minute and I'll recover." 

"It was a joke," she murmurs, licking her lips. She would like to reach out and banish the anguish that has brought to him, but it wouldn’t help. Always dressed in sombre colors, a deep voice and a dark look, a sullen disposition meant for a life that should have been monotonous and cheerless. This is hers Jon and she gives him her love unconditionally. Sansa adores his gaze, a deep well conceals a treasure.     

Now this dear eyes are tired from too much waiting and worrying. Waiting for her awakening. Worrying about her health. “A bad one. Don’t make jokes, Sansa, not now, not about this.” _Please_.

"How long?" She asks. How long has she been unconscious?

"Two days."

Two days. She has a memory gap of two days.

She almost doesn’t notice that Jon got up from his chair and went to sit on the edge of the bed. He leans forward and touches her cheek fondly. He's very attentive and takes the greatest care touching her, as she holds the fragility of crystal. Moved, she buries her face in his hands. She feels him wince.

"Sansa."

His kiss makes her lose a beat, even if it is childlike and innocent. Why is he looking at her so gloomily? As if she were one of the ghosts that they observe when crossing the courtyard? As if she were a memory, came back to haunt him? As if he had faced his worst fear in a direct fight and had lost?

"I'm here." She presses her forehead against his, his breath is broken. "I'm right here, Jon."

Jon is on the point of giving in, but he stops himself just in time. "You could have died." She can hear his thoughts as if were her own. _I do not wanna lose you. I cannot lose you._

She sighs, pushing aside with her fingers a curl from his forehead. "I could have died. I might as well die now, Jon. We are in a war, don’t forget it." 

"In the night, yes, again eerie things, but not for the lust of a man, not for the games of thrones." If I cannot accept to lose you in this impossible war, how can I accept it in the name of human insanity? 

The lust of a man. Sansa shudders. She cannot think of Petyr without having that reaction. It is not of fear, but of disgust. 

"How much do you remember?" 

Sansa frowns in concentration. "I was going to the library. I wanted to write - I wanted to answer a letter." Even now, in the heart of her house, she doesn’t feel safe, not really. Even now she fears that there are eyes and ears hidden behind the walls and intent to overhear private conversations. Willing to sell their secrets to the highest bidder. Old habits die hard. They have so many enemies and so much to lose. 

Jon kisses her forehead tenderly, urging her to continue. 

"I think I slipped," she lies easily and confidently. If Jon discovered that it was not an accident, then she would be lost. There would be no way to keep hold of Jon from going to kill Baelish. If his courage makes her so proud, it became a source of pain because it makes him too reckless, insensitive to the fascinating lure of danger.  

"You've not slipped. They made sure that you would slip. You know who I'm talking about. You cannot lie to me, Sansa. I know you. For this time I will pretend that you have not tried it because you have not yet completely recover." 

"What are you going to do?" She asks. She doesn’t intend to argue on this point. Also because it would satisfy the ambition of Petyr.  

"Nothing immediate," he assures her. "But I have in mind something drastic."  

She hides a smile. "Fire and blood?"  

"As much as a wolf riding a dragon can bring."  

Sansa is enjoying the warmth of Jon's arm around her shoulders. She holds an open hand on his chest that vibrates with each breath, counting the beats to mark the seconds and reassure herself on the reality that surrounds them. In her worst nightmares, Jon's chest is motionless, his skin as cold as ice. In her worst nightmares all that matters is lost. Jon doesn’t recognize her and stabbed her with the kiss of his sword. The blade pours darkness and doesn’t bring light. "Who knows what happened to me?" 

"All Winterfell." 

"They know why?" 

"They suspect." Unexpectedly Jon bursts into a chuckle. "In the kitchen it seems to be in the middle of a Court Trial. They want to find the person in charge at any cost. Everyone wants to avenge their queen. They love you." 

 _If I am ever Queen, I will make them love me ._  

"As does their King." 

Gods, they have so much to lose. 

"There is another thing." The hesitation in Jon's voice pushes Sansa to move away from his comforting embrace to look at him and find out the cause. "They think you were with child."  

 _Oh_. So this is. This was a premeditated attack. Involuntarily, she covers her womb in an instinctive gesture of protection. She doesn’t know exactly how she feels. Fear of not being strong enough. Disgust with a beauty that led to her only harm and ruin. Anger at those who only fuels the first two feelings. But especially fatigue. Jon’s words in Castle Black resound in her tiredness. She is tired of fighting, of efforts with which she should remember to be brave, strong and impervious at the mercy of the elements. Her skin is not of ice, is not of stone, is not of steel. Nor is of porcelain, has too many cracks. She doesn’t want to be a queen. She doesn’t want jewels, wealth or precious fabrics. All she wants is to be a loving wife and a loving mother, a benevolent lady, just as was her mother. Why must it be so difficult to realize such a small and simple desire? 

Absentmindedly, she realizes she's rubbing the thin scar that Jon has over the right eyebrow. It is now silver and no longer stand out like a purple wound in pale pink. She does it often. Touching his old wounds. She doesn’t know why. Perhaps to remind herself that her husband has already faced more tribulations of many usually a man faces in one life. He is already in his second.  

Jon caresses persistently her back and sheholds her breath when realizes that his movements are mirrored hers. He is rubbing his thumb over one of her scars. Judging by the position and length, it must be one of those inflicted by Joffrey's Kingsguard. 

"You saw my back," Sansa says in a whisper racked with sobs, though she doesn’t’ cry. The cracks, those damn cracks that from the beginning split her armor.  

"I did," he says in a soft tone. He is not apologizing. The gesture was not deliberative, but conscious. He wanted her to know that he has discovered.  

"They are ugly."  

"Yes," Jon agrees, unusually docile. "But they make you even more beautiful in my eyes."  

Sansa holds back a tearful laugh. "Just for yours."  

"Then I am the most fortunate of men." _I wish you had talked about this with me_ , he's saying to her in the way he keeps her close, possessive but not vexatious, _but I also understand why you didn’t._  

Jon begins to caress her hair. Someone has dissolved and washed them for her. They fall into strands ordered on her back and chest. "What would you like?" 

"That the war is over," she says with a barely audible voice. "Winterfell stills stands and so are we. Arya and Bran return to us. And-" 

"And?" 

She could feel his smile in the kiss that he rests on the crown of her hair. "Children that looks like you, like father." 

"They could look like Targaryen," he warns her. 

Sansa snorts. "Don’t be silly. I wasn’t speaking of a physical resemblance. I spoke of their character. I want our children to grow up honorable, strong and righteous, to know the kindness and learn to appreciate it." 

"I will give them to you if you promise to give me a little girl who has your smile." 

"It's a deal." 

There are still many secrets between them, truth to be explored, unresolved issues. The time to address them is not enough. The time to be together is measured in grains of wheat, in nightmares that do not disappear in the daylight, in men who are missing, in centimeters of ice covering the road leading to the Wall. For this, for the little time that remains to them, she must be brave.

She crosses Jon’s eyes with renewed determination. "Jon, I have in mind a plan, but I need you to trust me. Can you do it?"  

His response is immediate. His glance softens. "Always."  

Sansa will make sure that his trust in her is well placed. She puts to rest the fear that plagues her with a long kiss. She breaks away from him reluctantly and then begins to explain what she has in mind.

 

* * *

  

People murmur that there is a new wolf in the North. King White Wolf has found a worthy companion. A Red Wolf, a Red Star bleeding in the winter sky. 

They say that in the nights of the new moon together they take the form of wolf howling to the wind and run in the woods. A white wolf and a wolf with gray fur. 

They say that in one of these nights, before the transformation, an assassin, paid by one of the sworn enemies to Stark, has attacked the queen behind. They say that she has struggled with nails and teeth her attacker to defend the child she was carrying. 

They say that now the Northern Queen always dress in black and red with the wolf emblem embroidered on her corsets, to honor the grief and bloodshed, but also to honor the name of her husband King. 

They say that the Dragon Queen has docked a fleet of ten thousand ships to Dragonstone. She has recognized the king of the North as her nephew and, aware of son's loss of her nephew acquired, sent her the gift of a silver and obsidian pendant, set with rubies drops and black pearls brought from overseas lands. 

People murmur. They say and tell many things. Arya doesn’t believe in any.

"I have heard that the Red Queen has gouged out his eyes and scratched his face with nails like claws. The man had to throw her down from a tower, but in the fight he was dragged with her," one of the soldiers is telling to his companion.

"Do you think that the instigator is..."  

The men and the soldiers of the Valley become silent as if Death had touched them. Arya wants to laugh in their faces. So intimidated by the fear of possible retaliation by Littlefinger, Lord Protector of the Vale and the guardian of the orphaned Lord Robert Arryn. What do they know about real fear? The real fear is getting lost in the darkness that dwells in the emptiness of mind, where everyone is no one, one, and ten thousand. 

She finishes pouring the wine and returns to the kitchens. When the old Maede approaches to tell her that Lord Baelish expressly requested her presence in his rooms, she shows no satisfaction at the good news. The face that she stole belonged to a girl with red streaked hair and graceful features. She resembles Sansa like a needle looks like a dagger, but as vague as it is, the resemblance was enough to catch Littlefinger’s eye.

She had counted on his despicable nature and is the reason why she chose this face. She inquired about his habits. She knows that no guard will be out the door if he's with a girl.  

Not far from the four-poster bed, on a low table with lion's legs there are scented candles with nutmeg, a bowl of fruit and pumpkin pies. 

Jenny the serving girl obeys Petyr when he orders her to lock the door and to undress. However, it is a different girl who approaches him in her underwear and aims a knife at his throat. A girl with dark hair and sharp eyes, taller than Jenny was and wiry. Her expression is that of the wolf. "You know me?"  

Littlefinger eyes the knife nervously, but appears in control. "Should I, my dear?" He questions with a sly smile.  

“People murmur that you gave me in marriage to a Bolton. Say my name." Arya presses the knife deeper, against the uvula and at a vein throbbing. "Say it." 

The light of understanding in his face is accompanied by a glimmer of recognition and real terror. Arya loves that sort of expression, it is the moment that she prefers. She foretastes the hightpoint when he will beg for his life, lie or try to hide his cheating. "Say it." 

He swallows. Cold sweat covers his forehead. He has been touched by Death as men to whom that night she had served the wine. He acknowledged the death in her dark gaze, in the blade that she is pointing at him. He guessed what's coming. "Arya Stark." 

"But wasn’t Arya Stark that you sold to the Boltons. It was my sister." 

"She agreed to the marriage," he tries to defend himself. 

Aria’s raucous laughter is similar to the roar of the snowstorm that has been raging for weeks now outside the castle, which began with her arrival to the Gates of the Moon, and that will stop with the death of Petyr Baelish, with Jenny’s disappearance that night. "Say the name of the woman you almost did kill, giving her in marriage to a monster. Say the name of the woman you want as a time you wanted our mother. Say the name of the woman who just like Catelyn Stark, refused you for a Stark and that's why you tried to assassinate. Say it and I could make your death pleasant and quick."

"Sansa Stark."  

Arya grins. "Now think about it. You have damaged enough the Stark family. Your intentions toward my sister end here. Here ends your deceptions. You've played and you have lost."  

"You cannot do it," he says. He squirms, but she has a solid grip. The knife penetrates and a dirty blood trickle his neck and smear the blade. Littlefinger pales. "Who do you think saved your sister? That has made her what she is? You must have heard as they call her. The Red Wolf. Who do you think you have to thank for that?"  

"You know what else they told?" Arya accosts her face to him, their noses nearly brushing. "They say that out of jealousy you have sent an assassin to kill her and the child she was carrying. If the rumors are true ... "

"They aren’t," he replies quickly. He looks like a rat caught in a trap. There are no escape routes or loopholes. His end is marked and they both know it. But Arya can still enjoy some of that fear before claiming a new face. She can, thinking of Sansa, the vengeance that she decided to give her as a late gift of marriage. And he is only the first name on the list.  

"The rumors are true. And it is the ultimate reason why you deserve to die." The sweetness in her voice is illusory as were Jenny’s languid smiles, her cutlery arias. "Don’t worry. I will not touch your smirk."  

The first stab is for Sansa. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set a couple of months after the last chapter. There is a battle in King's Landing and more deaths to avenge.  
> I have not yet responded to your beautiful comments, but I will very soon, I promise!

**Si leonina pellis non satis est, vulpina addenda.**

_If a lion’s skin is not enough, add a fox’s._

(When something cannot be gained by force, guile is called for.)

 

* * *

 

"A crafty woman, your little wife."

No matter how many times he repeated to Daenerys that Sansa is no longer his wife, when they are alone she cannot resist the temptation to call her so. Tyrion pinches the bridge of his nose, preparing to correct her as usual. "Lady Sansa is no longer my wife, Your Grace."

"A shame."

"Not for your family, which has gained a valuable ally."

From one of the towering arched windows facing the sheer rock-face, Daenerys explores with narrowed eyes the blaze of pink-orange that is the horizon. Beyond the deafening noise of the wind and of the waves crashing against the sharp rocks, probably she hopes to distinguish the ferocious roar of her children homecoming from hunting. "I respect the smartness, even more if it is accompanied by a lively mind. What are the chances that what people murmur is true? "

"Only Lady Sansa knows the answer," he replies cautiously, but not without a certain irony. "I have witnessed and believed the most absurd things. A man who turns into a wolf will never beat a dragon." 

For a moment she caresses him with a soft look and her lips curl for the shortest and most marvelous illusions in a hint of smile. Then the illusion is broken and she returns to examine the landscape with inscrutable air. "I was referring to the chance that she was expecting a child," she replies in mild reproach. _Be serious._  

Tyrion gives her a charming, lopsided grin. _As Your Grace commands._ "In any case, it was a bloody clever move to spread gossip," he considers. "After a successful attack the victim appears as an easy, weak prey. Fold it to her advantage, convincing everyone that the attack was on an equal footing and that only her particular state has allowed the aggressor to get the better has been brilliant." 

Daenerys shares his thoughts with a tiny nod. The fury of the wind pushes her back, but still she stands despite her height and physique far from hefty. White-blond locks of hair and the long, liberal sleeves of her gown move depending on the wind direction from side to side.

He feels so much tenderness for this queen. She is a mixture of strength and vulnerability that he has encountered in just another magnificent woman, equally complicated in her fragility. 

"And what do you think about the child?" 

"I have to give her credit. I have been outwitted on every front." Tyrion rests on the ledge casually, with his back to the sunset advancing. For the queen is a trivial view, given that she is accustomed to dominate the world riding a dragon. For him it is not pleasant to get lost in the abyss of meerschaum and rocks that opens beneath them. "The loss of an heir puts her in a position of privilege. If before she had not yet succeeded in obtaining the support of all the Lord, now she has also won that of the most reticent. Also, the fact that she bore a child, it’s the prove her marriage has been consumed."

"If her story of abuse and torture had prevented her to be pressed to produce an heir, now this new loss makes her a martyr." The look on Daenerys’s face is hard, as it always is when the topic is touched. "Who would dare make demands of any kind to a woman with her past?"  

"Not just any woman." Tyrion remindes her. "But a Stark and the Queen of the North. Requests of that type will come."  

"The fact remains that now she will have a period of calm, in spite of everything."  

Tyrion lets the queen reflects. He knows her well enough to sense when it is appropriate for her to space with the mind. What does a queen think? It is an intriguing question except that he is not interested in what _a queen_ thinks, but _this_ _queen_ in particular, the one that is close to his heart.  

"They call her the Red Wolf."

"I've heard other unoriginal names. Red Star. Red Queen." Tyrion grins. "I wonder if it has anything to do with the color of her hair."  

"We could also call her Red Fox." Daenerys plays along. "Besides, she gave ample evidence of an unexpected ability to adapt."  

"There is an old saying." Tyrion protects his eyes with his hand as the sun reaches its peak, transforming the blue sky in a softer shade that already craves the stars. The days are gradually shortening and a drop in temperature is expected soon. Observing the queen no one could tell. The cold is unknown to her and she continues to wear inappropriate clothing for winter. " If a lion’s skin is not enough, add a fox’s."

"What's that supposed to mean?" She asks, raising an eyebrow.

Tyrion touches his forehead with a finger. "When something cannot be gained by force, guile is called for."

"A relevant point," she allows, amused. She leans forward and rests both elbows on the stone balustrade. "Red star..." she sighs to the wind like the secret shared with a lover.

"What are you thinking?"

Her profile stands out against the stone gargoyles and evokes one of the heroes of his childhood. Severe, intense, proud, inside her flows the blood of her famous ancestors.

"About an ancient prophecy," she says. “Once I was told that I was the prince that was promised. His song should be a song of ice and fire. If it must be, then where's my ice? In the House of the Undying I saw a vision of my brother, Rhaegar and then I saw the Iron Throne. It was snow-covered, so I decided not to touch it."  

Interesting, Tyrion must grant it to her. "It is not for a prophecy that we are acting neither for a song of which no one preserves memory, although I must admit that I have always wanted for one to be dedicated to me. I imagine that it wouldn’t be very good and that I would end up being described even shorter. Where do those doubts come from?"

"Who has never doubts is arrogant or crazy."  

"True. And we are neither one nor the other. So what do we fear really?" 

The use of the 'we' is deliberative. Usually improves her mood. It makes her feel less alone. In this her and her nephew are more alike than they are not yet realized. They decided to take the responsibility to support the weight of the world on their shoulders and this ungrateful weight provides a sensitivity that goes hand in hand with entrepreneurship, empathy and loneliness. Who can understand a dragon better than another dragon? Yet they both linger, are hesitant to rely on each other. Their letters are formal and maintain an air of solemn, mutual distrust. 

Daenerys smiles at him with obvious affection before retiring back to distant memories. "It was a Bleeding Star that led me to Qarth, but now a Red Star is at the side of my nephew."  

"And by Jon Snow, this Star is bound to you with a bond of kinship that no one can break." There's something in the way she spoke that puts him on alert. It is a strange feeling.

"You fear for your little fox," she guesses with a glimmer in her eyes. It is of curiosity, not jealousy. 

Tyrion shrugs. "I fear for us all."  

"Nevertheless, you're fond of her. Why?"  

“I have no reason not to be. Moreover, even if for a short time, Sansa was my wife." 

She is not satisfied, he can see it. And an unsatisfied queen is equivalent to three puppies restless dragon. Tyrion claps his hands and turns completely to her. He hates to brush up those days, the life that he has denied, but the serenity of the queen he chose is willing to this and more.  

"Good. Why?" He asks, arching an eyebrow suggestively. "Why should not I? Why should not I get attached to my young wife? Always so graceful my little wife, who spent her nights weeping and every morning shows off her bloodshot eyes to the indiscretion and cruelty of the Court. Members of my family have done everything in their power to kill her family and to bend her, make her an accommodating and submissive hostage. She responded to horrendous atrocities with courtesies and virtuous phrases, worthy of a true lady. She never cried when my stupid nephew did beat her by his Kingsguard, didn’t cry when he showed her father's head impaled on a spike of the Red Keep, she didn’t shed tears whenever she was forced to rejected her family to not be killed, she didn’t cry when she married me, even if I represented everything she hated. Why should I not be fond of her?" _She left me take her hand, she treated me like a man and not as a freak of nature._ "Why should not I admire her? She survived the madness and ruthlessness of my family. Sansa is a survivor, just like me and you." 

"You hope to see her on the throne, to the place that is mine by right of birth and lineage?" 

Daenerys’s question is worthy of her. Other men would notice only the fury, they would see the sparks and the anger in her eyes, but as he has just said to her, they are equal. Therefore, it hasn’t gone unnoticed to him the way she tensed, nor how she straightened her head and shoulders in a practical gesture, as to prepare herself to another blow of fate, another disappointment. 

He would do anything for his queen, to dispel the doubts that tear her apart. Eyes so old in her too attractive face, eyes that have already seen the monstrosity that is hidden in plain sight everywhere, behind vacuous good looks and false grace. He would do anything, even what she doesn’t have the courage to ask him. However, the desire to please her wasn’t strong enough to remove the appeal of protection that Sansa has in his eyes.  

Tyrion knows Daenerys, her nightly fears as a woman and mother of so many children, but of Sansa he knew her terrors as an orphan of a race annihilated. Perhaps the difference is there. Sansa retains the innocence and trait of childhood that must be defended, the rough stone that the diamond is before passing through the cutting process. Daenerys is the end result. There are still reminiscent of the naive girl she was, but now she is the queen of fire, smoke and salt she was always destined to become.  

Was it wrong to suggest that marriage? To act behind her? Maybe. But he has acted in her own interests, even if she fails to notice.

He takes her hand gently. He waits for her not to retract before kissing her knuckles and then resting her palm on the brooch she gave him before they embark upon this journey together. Sometimes it seems to him to have known her for a whole life, other times it seems to not know her at all. And sometimes, when behind the flames he sees the blackened heap of ashes which were the insecurities that she has set on fire, the parts of herself that she lost in the fire, the love he feels for her is so tyrannical to blind his reason. No, maybe after all accounts he didn’t act in her interest, but in his own.

"You have misunderstood me. I hope to see her behind that throne, with you. Does not the dragon have three heads?" 

 

* * *

 

"You shouldn’t be here." 

Through the impressive windows of the Great Hall, the moon draws oblique lines crashing onto the marble floor in pools of white liquid light. It seems to walk in the North, the dust is so abundant that can be mistaken for snow. The girl comes forward with a couple of rags. She moves in the shadows, away from the moonbeams and the visibility they would expose her. 

"It's late, my lady. It is time to clean-up." It’s the hour of death. 

The excuse has some truth, as each of her lies. The Great Hall _is_ filthy. It is since every inhabitant has preferred to abandon the Red Keep after what happened to the messengers sent by the Dragon Queen. Messengers that the Mad Queen did dip in wildfire and did burn like embers on the outer walls. Warning and condemnation for those who dare to stand up against her.

The King White Wolf has put an end to their suffering. Riding the green dragon, he shot an arrow that hit them straight to the heart by a hundred steps away. It will also be a dragon, but his eyes are of wolf and so his justice and mercy. 

After that, the Dragon Queen walked into the fire that the Fallen Queen had ordered to set the walls, after covering them with wildfire. They say that in front of that vision, even the doubtful had to change their minds. On the streets of the city already there are songs on the young and beautiful Queen came from the Narrow Sea, the Foreigner who leads storm to enemies and flat calm to allies. Already they curse the name of the Fallen Queen, who was willing to burn her kingdom rather than sell it.  

"Time to clean-up." The woman sitting on the throne produces a mocking verse. "Who do you think you're talking to, silly girl?" 

She is not the tall, golden and terrifying creature that populated her dreams. Her beauty has faded. The hair that brush the curve of her jaw are brittle and have nothing of the silky soft of spun gold. The face is burdened with the distinctive signs caused by the abuse of wine.  

Arya stops in front of the Iron Throne and make an exaggerated bow. Worthy of the woman to whom she has just offered. Her grin is appalling, doesn’t forgive. "With the queen of the oppressors, mother of boastful and monsters, whore of the Seven Kingdoms." 

Cersei doesn’t react. It is not only her beauty that faded, but also the pride and aggressiveness that once characterized her perversion. "If you think you will not pay every word with a whiplash, you're even more stupid than you look."  

Arya begins to climb the first steps. Still few and the other woman will see her face and understand and _fear._ "It is useless to call the abomination that was guarding the door," she prevents her. "That thing will not come. From now on what is dead will stay dead."

"Who are you?"  

Arya observes Cersei while she tries to hide the furtive movement with which she is seeking the dagger with the hilt plated gold that should be in a secret pocket, sewn especially for this purpose. The dagger that the night before Jenny stole before evaporate along with the other servants and nobles. "Show yourself in the light!"  

She pauses for a moment before becoming fully visible. Captures the vivid emotion that expands in Cersei's eyes when she realizes that there is no dagger to find. That she has been betrayed. She would like rubbing her hands for the desire she has to dance and jump in front of that expression.

She takes a step forward. Covered with blood that is not her own, an olive complexion and a long face, cold eyes with which she is studying hostilely her oldest enemy, her first.  Cersei takes note of this with one long gaze and the horror disappears to show something different. The echo of a contempt that has claimed as many victims as the Many- Faced God. And, of course, the surprise. "I know you. You're the clumsy sister. The lost girl."  

 _Lost_. Arya tastes the new name in her head. She likes it. It has a real sound. Also, she has been named in worst ways before. "Lost," she repeats, idly scraping away the gray dirt from under her fingernails with the tip of the golden dagger. "Yes, I was lost for a very long time. But then I have been found. The wolf has saved me. The wolf inside me."

Cersei frowns and her thin lips are distorted in a grimace of boredom. She moves a hand with an imperious gesture, to drive her away as if she is a troublesome presence. "You came here to do what, exactly? Avenge your family of traitors? Take the crown and give it to that murder of your sister? Don’t think I don’t know what happens in those lands of rocks and filth. What does make she better than me? She opened her legs to your brother. But he is not the first bastard with whom she dishonored herself. Oh, no." The curve of her smile oozes meanness and pettiness, but also delight. She derives pleasure from Sansa’s suffering. "A Bolton and before there was that abortion of my brother. The little dove has never shined for intelligence." 

"Jon is my brother, he has never been Sansa’s brother." Robb was the perfect brother, Sansa’s favorite. And Robb didn’t save her. This thoughts are wrong and troubles, a vortex that threatens to plunge her into the vacuum.  

Cersei burst into a bitter laugh. "Repeat this to yourself when she will give birth to maimed and sick children."  

"Like yours? North rememberes, Cersei Lannister. A life for a life, a death for a death. You have to pay for so many deaths. Fear cuts deeper than swords. And you're afraid, Fallen Queen. I can read you." 

"For whom are you doing this?" She asks with her eyes narrowed into two dark slits. "Who ordered you?” 

Again that question, _always_ that question, Arya thinks. "You are really stupid, do you know? Do you really think that I or my sister or one of my brothers has ever been interested in your stupid crown, in this stupid throne?" 

"Your sister wanted both." 

Sansa wanted to be happy. There is nothing stupid about this. "And she paid dearly for that desire. Some people learn from their mistakes." She traces in the air the future path of how she intends to proceed, pierce her flesh piece by piece. "I'll start with your hand and then I will take your nose. And then..." She stops and so do the steps behind her.

The witness missing, the last choice for a different end from that which she has designed. 

The relief of Cersei is unnerving. "Jaime." 

"Your golden shadow," Arya presents him, derisive. "The Kingslayer. You have a choice, Jaime Lannister. You can choose to follow your sister who betrayed you, or to honor the vow to my family." 

The glance of the graying man that was the Kingslayer is full of regret and remorse. It is not fixed on her twin sister, but on her and Arya feels on her heart a burden that looks like the lure of the blade. "Let her go." 

"Not so fast, Broken Knight. I know about the oath you swore to my mother, what you granted in exchange for your freedom." 

"How?" He asks.  

"The right question is  _who_. A giant blue-eyed. You know who I mean. She goes far and wide bringing your sword as a token of love. If it wasn’t yours, it would be poetic." Poetic is also the nervous flicker in his jaw after the allusion to her, _her,_ the giant woman, the guardian of his honor.  

"Let her go," he repeats stubbornly.  

"You have not answered my question. What do you choose?"  

"She has the right to a trial by combat."

"Like my father, my brother and my mother."  

"Draw your sword and fight against me then." 

"And let her run away like a rabbit, give the alarm? Why should I? I can kill you both."  

"There is no honor in what you're doing."  

"No, there isn’t." The admission overcomes all reticence simply, as only what is true can be able to do. Confessing is the easy side of the truth, is to carry the burden of the secret the hard side. The hatred she feels could burn the foundations of the keep like wildfire failed to do. "You Lannister doesn’t deserve it."  

"I'll kill you if you kill her. You know I will. Step aside. This is not a job for wolves." 

Oh, the despair. Arya recognizes it as one of the many shadows accompanying her on her missions. An unexpected twist. She bends her head to one side, stared the angular face of the man who is in front of her, who remains straight even if inside is broken and miserable, but at the same time greedy and hungry. Hungry for something, though, that remains to be seen. "So this is your choice? Be my guest." 

He doesn’t thank her, takes the dagger from her hands and turns it over at his fingertips with a strange stare.  

Only when he rounds to her, Cersei comes to understand fully the exchange of phrases which she attended. She opens her eyes and her lips move to formulate a prayer. "Jaime," is the only plea she has been probably abandoned herself in her full life and is a fixed point from which it is impossible to turn back. 

He shakes his head forward, crushed by the ghosts of love and honor, both died long ago. "Cersei," is his farewell and her sentence. The shot is one, quick, determined and stabs her in the chest. The hand holding her firm by the throat against the throne is the golden one. "I could save you. Why did you not allow me? Why?" 

"I wanted the power," she gasps. She coughs, and a gush of blood emerges to her lips. "I loved to sit on this throne more than I've ever loved you." 

That last cruelty marks her last breath.

Arya doesn’t know what reason pushes her to follow him. In his arms the dead body of his sister, he escort her for the last time in the building where they lived together for more than a decade. In the Ballroom of the Queen, silver mirrors in the niches recall the scene ad infinitum. What she is looking at? A brother crying his sister? A man mourns his woman? The tears streaming down his cheeks, hampered by the beard, what feelings reveal without divulging their secret? 

He pulls out the heavy velvet curtains hung from one of the windows and places them over his sister. In the embrace of purple cloth, her lips still stained with blood and red as those of a whore, the trimmed and bronze hair, Cersei Lannister is already the memory of herself. 

"Give me a flashlight." 

She hands it to him.

He didn’t hesitate and throws it at his feet. For a minute he didn’t look away from the image of his sister's face surrounded by flames. That image, each of the faces that she wore is whispering to her in the back of her consciousness, will remain engraved in his memory for the rest of his days. It will come back to haunt him every night. 

When the fire reaches the walls and touches the paneling of stained wood, they come out. 

She follows him again. Outside Maegor's Holdfast which is the heart of the Red Keep, through corridors covered with tapestries with hunting scenes, familiar and unfamiliar rooms. And when he stops and begins to punch a wall with his only good hand, Arya looks impassively.

"Why did you not let me kill her?"

No more Knight, Guard of the Queen, brother and lover. The man who was Jaime Lannister is now like her. A murderess, an avenger, a ghost. The shadow of a person who no longer exists.

"You gave me a choice." His voice is expressionless.

"She died. Does it really matter to who belonged the hand that pierced her?"

"It matters to me," he replies with ostentatious cynicism. He looks at her for a long time, with dull green eyes. "You don’t want to kill me. Why?" He questions it as if he doesn’t really care. An act of courtesy.

Arya rattles off the names with her usual fluency. "It's a list," she clarifies. "Names of people who have earned my hatred. And you're not there. That's why I haven’t killed you."

He dwells on the blood spatter on her face and hair, her clothes redolent of it. "You killed the Mountain." He throws her a reluctant smile of appreciation that doesn’t add any light to his angry and deadly eyes. "Remarkable for a wolf."

"What's dead should stay dead," Arya intones sepulchral, repeating what she told Cersei, thinking that everything she has learned is contrary to what has just uttered. "Valar Morghulis."

"What are you going to do now?" He asks. "Half of the names on your list are already dead. If what your half-brother says is true, you can still hope to kill them a second time. You must only go North."

"The road to my home is long."

And she knows it all too well. For many years she has traveled it without arriving at destination.

 


	8. Chapter 8

Sansa hopes to dream like the wolf inside her. It never happens. After all, she thinks, why the old gods should give her the ability to see through the eyes of Ghost when she was not able to save Lady by lions and deer?

While acknowledging this, she cannot help but hope every night. Her prayers are not what they used to be when she was little more than a child. Every night, before falling asleep, she prays for Jon’s safety, that he come back to her. Every morning, on waking, she repeats the same prayer. it has become her medicine against the pain that radiates with every breath, assaulting her by surprise every time she turns a corner with the certainty of finding Jon and he is not there, when her gaze hesitates on the place of honor next to her to the high table, when in the courtyard she searches for him among men who are training before remembering with a pang that she will not find him. Prayer is much more invigorating than the tonic that maester Henly has prescribed for her to take.

Sansa doesn’t dream the wolf nor the reality. Her dreams are not starry skies, woods immersed in the moonlight and in the white glow of freshly fallen snow, nor battlefields, banners fluttering and bodies pierced by arrows, swords or burnt by the dragons, but bedrooms illuminated by the soft candlelight and a fireplace fire. Calloused caresses and passionate kisses and hugs that do not know an end.

Her dreams have been replaced by memories, even sweeter than those of her childhood. That time is gone forever, irreparably marked by a sense of loss and melancholy, but the one with Jon it isn't, just waiting to take its course when he will return.

Meanwhile, she fills the cold and emptiness of the bed imagining. Jon’s toned body pressed over hers, the darting of the muscles under her hands and the satisfactory heat that endures after the act. The feeling on the skin of his beard, his mouth, his tongue...

Sansa closes her eyes, tightens her thighs, shivering with languor. She turns on her side and curls up on herself, a closed fist pressed against the lips. Firmly she bites the first finger to avoid screaming for dissatisfaction. Indulge in the pleasure would be easy. Jon showed her how to do, he drove his fingers the first few times, he explained to her the circular movements that serve to reach the peak. Indulge that weakness would be easy, but after? What would happen after? If now the bed is a miserable sight, disappeared the overwhelming waves of pleasure, how it would seem to her? Her loneliness would only increase. The pleasure would remind her the greatest delight that only the presence of Jon could give to her, the inconsolable sadness of his absence.

_"You'll be safe in Winterfell," Jon had told her the morning of his departure. He had leaned forward from the horse, holding it by the reins and had caressed her cheek. Sansa had put a hand over his, wishing she could turn her head and put her lips on his open palm. The multitude of soldiers, servants and nobles around them had been holding her, even though most of those present had promptly pretended to be busy to grant them a semblance of intimacy._

_She had nodded, not taking her eyes from Jon. His eyes had showed her own desire, unsatisfied in spite of the night spent together. "I'll stay here and I'll wait for you." She had squeezed his hand and had whispered only for his ears: "I'll be waiting every night."_

_His reply was accompanied by a cheeky smile. "Only at night?"_

_"By day I will be too busy to perform the duties of both to fulfill the promise."_

_His hand was still lingered on the side of her face turned upward, rubbing the corner of her mouth with rough kindness. "That's my wife."_

Come back to me, her heart had sang as she had watched him ride on the way down south. Come back to me, her conscience had winced as the tall and strong profile of Jon had become smaller and smaller, the outline of Ghost had turned into an indistinguishable form from the surrounding background.

Now she almost regrets the stubbornness with which she rejected Jon’s proposal to leave Ghost with her. The direwolf would have mitigated the pain of the separation, the longing. She knows that it was the wisest choice. Its presence has served to remind Daenerys as anyone else of her cortege the true nature of Jon. Jon Stark, the King in the North, the White Wolf. But the names are only names and what is a name in comparison to the call of blood?

Sleep is completely gone. Sansa pulls back the blankets and drapes a shawl around her shoulders.

In the solar, after lighting the candles, she sits at her desk and gets ready to respond to letters that she had left for the next day, to read the statements, the reports of the group of explorers sent to the Wall. Among them there is also Podrick. The concern that Brienne tries not to let leaked about the fate of her squire has also become hers, was added to her other concerns.

At the sound of someone knocking at the door, Sansa poses the quill on the parchment. Who knocked doesn’t wait for her permission to enter. There is only one person, in addition to Jon, that benefits that concession and this person is Brienne.

Scrutinizing her carefully, Sansa wonders if she has the same resigned and gloomy appearance, if as Brienne she keeps in the back of her eyes this measure of wistfulness. Sansa’s look slips on the black band that Brienne is wearing tied to the right arm and on which she has sewn the emblem of a lion, black to make it less recognizable and protect her sworn sword by chatter. Brienne began to wear it when she learned of Cersei Lannister’s death. No one has found the body of her brother or was able to offer news about him, but for some reason Brienne seems sure he's dead. "Jaime loved his sister more than his own life," was the only explanation she gave. Sansa will never come to grasp the complexity of the relationship that bound her to the Kingslayer. The only thing that she can give her is discretion, honoring her need for privacy with silence.

"Sansa," Brienne says, shifting awkwardly in the middle of the room.

Sansa frowns. Not for the familiarity with which she called her, but because, despite his insistence to greater confidence, she had never agreed before this time. It is clear that something happened, something that has rocked Brienne to the point of bringing down the cornerstone of her sense of respectability and integrity. She appears disoriented, agitated. She fails to meet her gaze, but maintains it fixed on the handle of her sword.

Sansa’s heart skips a beat. "Jon?"

Brienne shows a moment of awareness, quickly followed by remorse. "No, my lady."

Sansa is invested with relief. With the last raven, Jon wrote of the conquest of King's Landing, the link established with one of Daenerys’s dragons. "A raven has come?"

During the months the ravens, besides the usual letters, began to deliver strange notes, written in a foreign language, not marked by any recognizable signature.

When the first arrived, it took almost two days before maester Henly recognized the language and understood that it was a dialect of one of the Free City of Essos. That note informed Sansa of Petyr Baelish’s death even before the news became public. ‘He will not be the last’, so the message concluded.

Her secret informant, after that, started sending notes to update the situation of the Seven Kingdoms. Whispers, jokes, stories in the night. All written in a whimsical, ambiguous and penetrating style. Whoever he is, Sansa decided, wasn’t an enemy. The latest note, she remembers, just said 'I'm coming'.

"Someone has come." Undoubtedly Brienne has something wrong. She's pale as if she had seen a ghost or for the pain of a wound. "Your presence would be advisable." 

Sansa gets up and moves to the bedchamber. She intends to wear something proper before receiving the unexpected guest, but Brienne rests a hand on her arm and shakes her head, letting her gather that it is not a visit of official nature. "It will not be necessary. It isn’t that kind of visit and I don’t think that the guest will take care of your appearance. She has never done in the past."

What kind of guest could she ever receive in her nightgown?

Brienne gives her a small smile of encouragement and Sansa begins to hope. 

 

* * *

 

The guests are two and both seems to have seen better days. Their clothes are tattered and unfit for cold climate. They are of good quality, but now they are too worn out to make sure. By their appearance it is easy to see that they have slept in the woods, camping where they could.

One is a girl, high enough and wiry, at her side a slender sword. The other is a bearded man who is missing his right hand. He is so dirty that it is difficult to see the color of his hair, could be dark as those of the girl. If the girl is fifteen years old, find out his age is more difficult. Is he a man at the height of his physical vigor and strength? Or a man who moves forward his old age, to the winter of his life?

Despite the obvious fatigue that afflicts both, their haughty posture and the contemptuous way they square off the room clearly states their lineage. They are noble, probably forfeited or heirs of a smaller House.

Davos has no idea who they are.

"We'll have to wait much longer?" The man asks impatiently. From a few minutes he began to go back and forth across the room. "How long does it take to throw a woman out of her bed in the middle of the night?"

It is very likely that Lady Sansa was already awake when Lady Brienne went to warn her of their arrival. Since the King left is rare that the Queen sleeps more than a couple of hours a night and doesn’t spend the rest working by candlelight. However there is no reason that these guests are made aware of the Lady of Winterfell habits.

"Sansa was awake," the girl speak with ease. She is sitting sideways on a bench and looks around erratically, not curiously, but with a light of recognition, of belonging.

"How do you know? Your wolf instinct did whisper that in your ear?" He mocks her.

The girl rolls her eyes, clearly bored. "There was light in her room. I noticed when we arrived."

Davos is going to ask what exactly are the relationships that bind her to Sansa Stark, but the opening of the doors and the appearance of Lady Sansa and Lady Brienne doesn’t allow him to give voice to his interest.

If even the simple fact that the queen is in her nightgown, (her presence made more appropriate by the mantle she is wearing above), isn't enough to highlight the irregularity and the extraordinary nature of this meeting, of those guests, then it is sufficient to look them in the face. Both women display an expression unusual, unique. It isn’t hope, but something that it's pretty close.

Lady Sansa’s eyes are fixed on the dirty-faced girl, those of Lady Brienne instead devour the man while she clasps convulsively the handle of the sword to the point that he fears that she intends to unsheathe it and hit him. 

Neither of the two women intend to talk and Davos begins to find it strange. Even the man who until a few moments ago he would have been willing to pay as long as he was silent. But now he looks at Lady Brienne as if he doesnt' believe completely that she is real and she looks at him the same way.

In the end is the girl with the sword to break the tension. She takes a step forward folding her lips in a predatory smile rather than human. "It's nice to see you again, sister." She cannot say a word more. In two strides Lady Sansa is in front of her, holds her in a suffocating hug and burst into uncontrollable tears.

"Lady Arya," he finally understands and turns to Brienne, who is observing the scene protectively, to confirm.

The woman's attention is again on the man who is next to her. Her eyes soften, are less grumpy and upset. "You have my gratitude for having brought her home, Ser Jaime."

His green eyes soften similarly and so his voice, despite the sharp irony. "I had no choice. Apparently, there was an oath made to a giant woman with blue eyes." 

 


	9. Chapter 9

By Lady Sansa's order to the guests were offered a hearty meal and a hot bath, a comfortable room and adequate clothing.

While her lady is taken up by retrieve the lost time with her sister in the few hours that separate them from the first light of dawn, Brienne finds herself wandering like a restless soul in the long corridors of Winterfell, captivated by doubt, devoured by a questionable desire. She fails to quell the restlessness that cames flooding in her stomach, as waters stirred by a storm in progress. The storm has a name, eyes that are like lightning, a laugh that echoes the thunder. Jaime.

The thought of him guides her steps to the room that was assigned to him.

"Come in," she hears screaming from inside.

He is not surprised by her presence, by the fact that she has searched for him almost immediately. On the contrary, seems that it was obvious that she would come to him.

Brienne saw a group of women from the kitchens transported to the rooms of Lady Sansa a large copper vat, fit well for an adult man. The hot water prepared for Jaime fills an average vat and seems barely sufficient for the task.

Naked from the waist up, he's trying to wash away the dirt as best he can, using a damp cloth. Water drips from his hair, longer than they were the last time they met. With a beard and that desperate sparkle in his eyes, for a moment she feels disoriented. The impression is to relive their first meeting all over again, to be torn forcefully from the small and warm room and be thrown into a pit with a bear. Only, in that case, it was the captivity to exhaust him (overthrow him, not bend him), in this case is Cersei’s ghost.

Brienne stiffens.

"It's nothing you have not already seen at Harrenhal," he says with his imperishable grin.

He misunderstood, but explain to him the nature of her sudden discomfort would be painful. "What happened to your golden hand?"

"Thrown away somewhere in the Riverlands, probably it's in the bottom of a stream."

"Why?"

Jaime pulls back the dripping hair to look at her without hindrances. "It attracted too much attention."

"If you want a new one," she speaks slowly, "I can ask permission to forge one for you." Not gold, she thinks, but one of iron could go just as well for the moment.

"No, Brienne." His smile disappeared. "No more golden hands or white cloaks."

The intensity of his gaze, the solemnity in his voice is deafening as too sour or sweet smell. "I see."

"I didn’t expect that the Queen Sansa Stark would have a reaction so emotional."

"Arya is her sister," she says with just more force than necessary.

It doesn’t go unnoticed to him, of course. "And I more than anyone should understand the relationship that binds them, don’t I?"

For that she has no answer.

"That black band that you bring around your arm has a lion embroidered on it." Jaime indicates it with the stump. "Is it for me?"

To deny would be futile. "Yes."

"You thought I was dead. Why?"

 _Why, Brienne?_ The unspoken question in the eyes of her lady when she had seen the band around her arm for the first time. Now as then it rises spontaneously to her lips the same explanation: "Cersei was."

"And that was enough to convince you that I was too?"

Brienne glimpses a hint of anger in him and doesn’t understand why. "You loved her."

He looks at her like an idiot. "Yes, I loved her and I let that love made me blind for half my life. I haven’t been blind for years. Do you want to know since when?" He takes a step forward and Brienne remains motionless, even if her first instinct is to make one back. "It was because of you, Brienne. You opened my eyes. You showed me that love doesn’t necessarily mean compromising themselves. You love intensely and you give your soul and blood for it, but not your sword, never your sword. Do you remember why I come back to Harrenhal?"

She nods, with a lump in her throat. "You had dreamed of me."

"I had dreamed of you," he repeats with a kindness so unusual that shakes her. He has always been kind in his gestures (give her a sword and armor, a cause to be married), never in words. "Sometimes I have the impression that I never woke up from that dream."

An idea strikes her and it sounds too absurd to consider it, and yet... And yet, she thinks and any prior certainty collapses. "How did she die?"

He tilts his head to one side, watching her with a slight smile that doesn’t reach his glassy eyes. "How do you think she died?"

"People say-"

"Since when what people say has any relevance? People began to call me the Kingslayer and you the Beauty. Not very reliable as a source, do you not believe? What have you heard?" He insists.

"They say that her spirit haunts the Red Keep, complains every night crying for the children who lost and cursing her murderess."

"What else do they say?" He asks.

"Nobody thinks you killed her."

"But you do." Since the moment she entered, his eyes never left her and don’t even now that she averts hers, overwhelmed by the truth they contain. "You know that I wouldn’t allow anyone else to do it, to touch her," he says in a soft whisper that smells of danger.

Brienne nods sharply. "Why did you follow Arya in Winterfell?"

Jaime shrugs. "We took each other's company. She has a sense of humor even worse than yours. You at least don’t curse in Bravoosi and definitely I prefer your grim look compared to hers."

"I asked you why, Jaime."

"No longer ‘Ser Jaime’?" He teases. "This is the problem with you, Brienne. You always do the right questions." He runs his hand on his cheek and sharpens his glance. "You know it. You know why I'm here, only that it is comfortable for you to pretend not to know."

"Why should I pretend?" She asks, pulling back in front of the accusatory tone.

"For your damned honor and to preserve what little remains of my own."

It is too much to bear.

"What you brought there with you?" He questions to distract her from nervousness. "Cheese and stale bread? It seems to be back to my year of captivity."

Brienne hands him the plate in an automatic gesture, turns up her nose. "You smell the same as then in effect."

With a cheeky grin, Jaime takes the plate. He sits at the table and indicates the other chair to her in a clear invitation to occupy it. As she sits, he looks at her and makes a long sigh, like that of someone who has just finished training after hours and feels burden upon himself the fatigue. It is the weariness of someone who has done nothing but hit and wait to be hit and now knows he can relax finally. "I missed you, wench."

"You didn’t call me like that for years," she replies, surprised. The old nickname, once hated, is now tinged with emotion.

"Because for years you weren’t." The sweetness and the affection with which he is so determined to watch her make difficult for her to remain lucid.

"I am no longer the person I was."

"Of course you are," he says with a laugh devoid of fun. "Always stubborn, always sullen, always reserved and with impeccable morality."

"Jaime."

"All right, you've changed, but you are the same in all that matters."

"You're the same, just a little more respectable." She makes the smallest of smiles and finally the emptiness in his smile fills with the same warmth of his gaze. "We changed together."

"I think so."

 

* * *

 

She didn’t help Arya to undress nor to scrape the mud that only the hot water and the rubbing managed to remove. She couldn’t because Arya wouldn’t let her.

Arya has changed, the change is evident. She is rough like the rind of a lemon, incisive in the way of speaking and moving, ready to strike if necessary. She can be changed in so many things, just as she was forced to do to survive, but not in this, not in her independence, the autonomy that for her is an act of pure freedom, essential as breathing.

Arya languishes in the gray-water of the copper tub. Her skin is red from too much rubbing.

Sitting as close as possible, Sansa studies the dry and slender body that is visible in the water. The thin scars scattered on the arms and shoulders are emphasized by the amber light of the candles that her sister spreads on the floor in a circle. Sansa is curious to know whether it is a superstitious ritual of protection or a habitude without a hidden meaning, something that Arya has acquired during her wanderings.

To have her here, at hand, seems like a dream, one of those in which the little girl she was would have easily believed, but that she has always avoided indulging to save herself from the pain of disappointment that would be achieved. How many times, especially now that Jon is away and in constant danger, she flew with the mind, thinking about how it would be to get back Arya and Bran? How many times she thought of the apology that she wanted to convey to her sister, to beg for forgiveness?

Now she doesn’t recollect anything. The only thing on which her over-excited mind is able to linger are things of little consequence. In the end, it's just for desire to hear her voice that she asks: "Why were you traveling with Jaime Lannister?"

Arya doesn’t blink. She pours her head, leaning against the edge of the tub, her hands clinging to the sides. "He killed Cersei."

Sansa has an inner wince. She thinks of Brienne and her convinced reaction to the news of her death. If before she needed to know the facts for her own inner peace, now more than ever she needs to know as much as possible for Brienne. "How do you know?"

"I was there," Arya says with disinterest in the whole affair, closing her eyes.

"How did she die?" Sansa questions.

"With a dagger stabbed in the heart."

Useful information, but a starting point from which there is no escape routes or detours in order to proceed further. "What did you do in King's Landing?"

"The death of Cersei belonged to me, but I concede it to him," Arya says in a cryptic and elusive tone.  

"Where have you been all these years?"

"In a place that few know."

"Why did you not come back before?"

"I couldn’t. I had to finish my training. I had to be stronger than them."

"Them?" Sansa inquires, noting that Arya has contracted her fingers at the mention of that 'them'.

"The people to kill on my list."

Sansa raises an eyebrow. She knows that it is inappropriate, evens so she cannot help but smile to her sister. "Do you have a list?"

Arya smiles back. "Don’t pretend you don’t have one, too."

"Jon is in King's Landing."

"I know," she responds with a voice so low that it would lose in the crackling of the fire if Sansa doesn’t lean out to pick it up.

"Have you met him?"  

A faint hint of denial.

"Why not?" Sansa has a moment of incomprehension, before she remembers how it was for her. The fear that he didn’t receive her, didn’t recognize her, that Jon could even turn his back and walk in the opposite direction. Irrational and foolish fears, magnified by the desire to be loved by someone who could see the person that she was and accept her.

It is stronger than her. Sansa leans forward and touches Arya’s  cheek with her fingertips.

She feels her sister stiffen, sees how she scrutinize her with suspicion, feels the energy that crackles under her skin like the fire must majestically crackle in dragons, waiting to be turned into death and destruction. "You're scared of what Jon will think?"

Arya bites her lower lip. "I'm not used to being Arya Stark, to think like Arya Stark."

She is no longer accustomed to love and different feelings besides anger and hatred. She would like to take possession of the confusion that her sister is feeling. _This is what you felt for all of us, mother? And we were so many. How could you charge up to the concerns of everyone, even the smallest, preserving your smile?_

"Who did you have to pretend to be?"

"A guy named Arry," Arya answers promptly. "Weasel. Salty. Cat. Beth. Mercy. No One."

In her mind, Sansa rattles off her identities with the same ease, before repeating them aloud to Arya’s benefit. "A little dove. A little bird. Sansa Lannister. Alayne Stone. Sansa Bolton."

Arya doesn’t show surprise, but something makes its way into her eyes. Recognition. "How can you not be crushed by the weight of all the faces that you wore?" She demands.

"Because each of those faces had something of mine and at the same time were only masks with which I protected myself. Each of them is alive in me, watching over the woman I am." Each one reminds her that it is not the appropriate time for naivety and carelessness, not even for the youth if it results in inexperience and immaturity. Sansa Lannister wept all her tears. Alayne Stone has been for the last time the puppet, not the puppeteer. Sansa Bolton had the courage to jump into the void, facing death.

"The things I've done, the things I've seen..." Arya falters, her gaze lost in the shadows cast on the walls by the candles. "They are not worthy of the Stark name."

"Our mother loved our father even if she thought that Jon was his bastard son. Each of us has done things unworthy of the name we bear. This doesn’t make us despicable people." Sansa rests her hand on that of Arya that dodges it with a curt gesture.

"You don’t know what you're talking about," she says condescendingly.

How can I if you do not talk to me? Sansa would like to shake her from apathy, but would serve to something? She remembers how was for her even this, to have the consciousness of evil within herself, its nefarious weight. Being convinced that nothing will serve to clear it. Just be loved by Jon saved her from that precipice.

She hardens her expression. "Maybe. Or maybe not. I too have felt the thrill of the hunt, the flash of euphoria when you observe the meat of your tormentor torn and all because you wanted it to happen. But I also learned that it is not true freedom."

Her sister listens carefully, eyes narrowed. This isn’t already a small victory?

"Why did you kill him?"

"There have been so many." The expression of Arya is cold, unreachable. "Who are you talking about?"

"Littlefinger. Don’t try to deny it. It must have been you."

Arya nods. "It was me."

"Why?" Sansa frowns. "He didn’t hurt you."

"Not directly," Arya grants. And then, because she still doesn’t grasp what is evidently implying, she rolls her eyes and snorts. "I did it for you, stupid."

"The notes," Sansa says. They must have been hers. "Why did you write them in code?"

"Because we're in war," Arya replies immediately, but Sansa is already learning to see beyond the shadows that darken her face.

"No, it is not true."

"No, it is not true. It was for the fun of make things a bit difficult for you."

 _It is for these small, perfect moments of happiness, mother? This is the reward of suffering?_ "I missed you, Arya."

Arya hesitates. "I missed you too."

 

* * *

 

Observe the two sisters Stark is how to follow the moves in a game of cyvasse between two experienced players.

They dance around each other on tiptoe, allow ample room for maneuver before launching a strategic attack, forward and then backward, backward and forward again. It is not a diversion that in the long run threatens to annoy them.

Lady Sansa is constantly worries about her younger sister, enough to send every hour someone to inquire of her position inside the keep and the employment which she is occupying herself.

Similarly, claiming fictitious excuses, Lady Arya waits patiently for her sister outside the room where the Council meets, after she explicitly expressed her desire not to take part in it for the moment. The Lost Stark spends her mornings in the armory or the library, her afternoons with the Kingslayer observing the men who train in the yard and occasionally barking fixes for bad posture and slowness of movement.

Davos recalls one afternoon when, infuriated by too many mistakes, she jumped down from the balcony and landed without a scratch, marching towards the poor guilty and beginning to illustrate aloud the mistakes. When he reported this to Lady Sansa, she simply shook her head.

"Do you not intend to do nothing about it, Your Grace?"

Sansa continued to write. "If I ban Arya to jump from the balcony, next time she, as a demonstration of force, would be able to jump from one of the towers."

Neither of the two girls came forward, but both search each other as two reluctant lovers, too shy to make the first step.

Davos doesn’t understand. "Why the Starks must be so damn stubborn when it has to do with the family?"

It has already been a week since Arya Stark’s return.

Lady Brienne looks at him with indulgence and understanding, before going back to peer suspiciously the gaps between the trunks of the godswood as if they were hiding hidden enemies.

At least ten steps that distances them and the ghost of a direwolf in the middle, Lady Sansa and Lady Arya are walking without speaking a word to each other. The sunset light that goes beyond the branches of bare trees and heavy with snow plunges their figures in an amaranth luminescence.

The slight difference in height, the discordant colors, the facial features that really have little in common, everything serves to sculpt in the mind of a careless spectator a feeling of strangeness, despite the close relationship, of detachment despite the proximity. There's more, hidden in plain sight. Both girls are united by the same grace, an attractiveness that has little to do with the classical harmony and canonical beauty. It is in their fighting spirit that one can find the resemblance, the affinity of two distinct personalities and yet similar. In the energy they give off, the impetus with which they claim justice for their convictions in such different ways: one with consummate sobriety, the other with a vehemence bordering on aggression and unmerciful.

"I understand them." The voice of Lady Brienne is so low that Davos note with delay that she has spoken. "They have been separated for years. They feel the weight of each year and even so sometimes it is as if hadn’t passed even one. They remember with nostalgia how things used to be before, but don’t want that they change back. They want something more. The time spent apart, the experiences that have strengthened them and urged them to continue their path, don’t count if they still serve to separate them. They accept everything about each other, but they cannot go forward until the other also will prove ready for the same step, to forget the mistakes and forgive. Being together is a painful pleasure because it evokes everything they have lost, but also what they could achieve together."

Davos no longer knows if Lady Brienne is still expressing an opinion on the relationship of the sisters Stark or rather she is speaking from personal knowledge. He only knows that for once she is manifesting an unusual side of herself, not the warrior, but the woman under the armor. Her gaze doesn’t speak of fighting and blood- songs, of life and death, but of something fragile and precious, great and mysterious. Her gaze speaks of love.

He looks back at the two Stark, whose distance tapers in their sharp shadows to the point of disappearing. They are like children. They have to learn all over again how to live with each other.

 


	10. Chapter 10

_"We are husband and wife. We are in the eyes of the old gods, in front of honored witnesses." Sansa described the fact with an enviable calmness, but the dignified nature of her  bearing began to unravel like tears of wax from a candle that languishes as soon as one of the Lords questioned the sanctity of their union._

_"He is a Targaryen!" The same Lord exclaims, purple in the face. Jon would like to remember his name._

_"Then I am a Lannister and a Bolton." Sansa’s blue eyes are carved from the ice of the Wall while she observes the Lord who spoke with a fury that goes straight to the heart. He has long been known that Sansa is more than beautiful. Beautiful to the point that only look at her too long takes a man’s breath away and makes him rave. Cloaked in the freezing fire of her anger like a queen, her beauty becomes something deeper. It is a beauty that cannot be described. Indefinable and intrinsic, it can only be admired as the snow that paints the winter, burning the grass and covering the trees._

_Sansa turns to Lady Lyanna with a cynical smile. "It’s not what did you say at our first meeting, Lady Lyanna, meaning that you were fairly confused by the speed with which I changed husbands and jumped from one marriage to another?"_

_Lady Lyanna lowers her head in a curt nod. The smirk that she caters to Sansa is similar to the one she addressed to him after proclaiming him a king. A proud contentment that transcends all caution._

_"Those marriages were not valid," the Lord remarks gruffly. "The one with the Imp was never consummated."_

_"But the other was consumed in every possible way, including the most sordid."_

_Each of the Lord blushes crimson for embarrassment and shame. Who would not, remembering the disgrace to which the daughter of their Lord Paramount has been brought, sister of the deceased King?_

_Sansa opens her arms as if to subject herself to their disapprobation, as if by doing so she could show them the dishonor that she believes to bring on herself as a stigma. "Then, my Lords, am I still a Stark?"_

_The Lord who has ranted until a few seconds ago is now silent. Another Lord comes forward. He bends his knee awkwardly, but speaks with rude firmness. "You are a Stark, Lady Sansa. You have never agreed to these marriages, and who did it for you will pay for the crimes he committed against you and your House."_

_Sansa nods, unimpressed. "And Jon?"_

_"Jon Snow-"_

_"Jon Stark. He is my husband now."_

_"A wedding that we were not consulted about and to which we would certainly not have given our approval if we had been made aware of it,” objects again the Lord unnamed._

_"And what would you have suggested as alternative?" Sansa questions, regardless of containing her lack of tolerance. "To deny your king and put on the Northern throne a man chosen among the survivors sons of your families? Winterfell is my home and I will not allow that it be dishonored again. I will never join to men who in time of need have refused to recognize my rights, that left me in the hands of a Bolton. My father has turned into his grave, and so my brother." Sansa draws a long breath. She observes one by one the Lords in the room, daring them to refute the truth of what she just said. "We had to act quickly. The Dragon Queen would have demanded a union with Jon for herself. A refusal would jeopardize the independence of the North."_

_"The North-"_

_"Do not be absurd! The queen has three dragons! How do you think to handle them in a confrontation? With spears and fences? Catapults?"_

_"If he really has Targaryen’s blood," the Lord spits every word like poison, with a disdain that he wastes no time to hide, "he could rule them."_

_Sansa's voice is furious, even though it retains a semblance of composure. "He is your King and you will show the respect that you swore to him, recognizing him as such. No one can change what we are, in spite of the names that we acquire in life. We remain true to ourselves, to the people that we become growing, that we chose to be. No matter what name he had when he was born, he grew up as Jon Snow. This is the name that my father gave him, that's who he is. My father protected him for years and he raised him as his own son. He sacrificed his honor to save the blood of Stark flowing in him. Once you went in war for his mother, Lady Lyanna Stark. You have promised loyalty, you fought for him. This is the honor of the North? These are the claims of oaths? Fleeing from a dragon's tail?"_

A dragon's tail.

When the tail of Rhaegal sweeps away a row of at least twenty men with a powerful shot that reminds that of a whip, the thought of Sansa is replaced by the screams of the fallen enemies. The image of his wife is soon recalled by the blood splattering everywhere, covering without distinction both allies both opponents.

"Retreat! Fold inward! Towards the Gates!"

The army of the Lannister, wrapped in the proud colors of its House, lurches quickly and messy to the city gates. None of the men of the North moves to chase them. Tormund and the Free Folk raise their arms and hurl curses. They call them cowards, mock them. "This is the famous courage of lions?" Tormund howls with his booming voice in the general clamor.

Jon drops the shield. He has a withered arm and the hand that holds the sword is numb. He sighs and with experienced eye assesses the damage on the battlefield, the loss of men on both fronts. It is not a draw, it will never be a draw. For every soldier Lannister there are at least twenty men in the retinue of Daenerys. Not that it matters. No one seems to affect how senseless is this carnage, not after what happened to the messengers sent with a proposal for armistice and whose tortured bodies were exposed mercilessly on picks.

The massacre has recurred day after day for more than two months. The men start to be tired, to demoralize. The conquest of the city seems unattainable.

Jon cannot blame them. Their grievances are more than justified.

A frontal attack at the city walls, trying to climb them, is impossible since Cersei Lannister has given orders so that they were covered with tar and then with wildfire.

Attack from below, through tunnels or sewers, is just as unthinkable. Grey Worm, after a patrol, announced that he had discovered entire scattered galleries of huge crates. Jon remembers how Tyrion, the first to have studied the content, bleached and started to curse her sister. The plan is to free as many underground passages from wildfire. It is a work that is done during the day methodically, while the battle rages, when the eyes of the sentries and of the citizens are all focused on what happens on the outside, not the inside. However, it is an operation of mackerel that takes time and patience and nerves of steel as well as some of the best men. 

The proposal to attack from the sky was dismissed with a curt refusal by Daenerys. She does not intend to set fire to the citizens only for the reckless behavior of those who should protect them. Not when there is a danger, unspoken but known to all, that the whole city leaps into the air like a firecracker or a firework, given the huge amount of wildfire that abounds in every corner like a plague. 

Defeating the enemy army and take possession of the city through the main Gates is the most plausible solution but also the most unpleasant. Going into war against the Lannisters, Jon had been anticipating the satisfaction that it would be achieved. It would appease the secret craving that occasionally, in his wolf dreams, he faces with increasing craving on the edge of his consciousness. Take revenge on the family that had deprived him of his for so long, due to untold suffering, that was one step away from completely exterminate the Stark for a brick fist and a handful of rusty iron, for a glory that has no honor and a power that does not bring peace, only war.

But there is no pleasure or satisfaction in slaying men fighting with no real purpose, not motivated for the sense of duty, but for the alternative horror that awaits them as punishment for their hypothetical rejection: be burned alive.  

The terror that Jon can see in their eyes slows down his movements, but sharpens the song of the sword that joins the roar of fire and smoke around him, enveloping him like the night cloaked the sky.  

The battle of the day is concluded. The army that marched with him from Winterfell stays true to his directives, however little they may be appreciated. None of his men chased the enemies and now that the last of the lion rampant flag disappears over the gigantic Gates that are closing, Jon can sheathe the sword and throw away the shield. That's the way it is decreed the end of the battle.

Even Rhaegal now has learned to recognize it in the weariness of those repetitive gestures. Today is no different from usual. The green dragon lowers its crested head to bring it to his height. An eye bronze, the size of a goose egg, is an inch from his nose. Jon rubs the space between the eyes, just above the nostrils flattened similar to those of a snake. The scales have the texture of the stone and in the glare of the setting sun shine like precious stones.

Rhaegal spins the giant head towards the besieged city, and as happened with Ghost in the past, the thoughts of the dragon filled his mind as easily.

Call them thoughts is wrong. Thoughts predict words. In the case of the dragon and the direwolf, it is more appropriate to define them as perceptions and inclinations. It’s a language that does not possess expressions suited to the too clear and punctilious words of men. A language that roars and is silent with the same aggressive and ferocious intensity. The desire to deploy the huge wings and feel the exhilaration of the void beneath him is overpowering as the hunger of meat that fills throat and stomach. As the desire to wipe out with blows of claws the gates of the red city and induce the Lannister army at the battle.

"You cannot force those who refuses to fight," Jon tries to reason in a low voice.

Rhaegal is puffing smoke from his nostrils, but its eyes appear less intransigent and its frenzy produces roars less ruthless in the tumult of his reflections. 

"My King!" Someone at the end of his vision calls him, shouting ceremoniously titles as if they were his name, would explain who he is. 

"Yes?" He asks, without taking his glance from the dragon. 

"The Queen requires your presence."

Jon nods with a sigh. "Tell her that I'm going." 

 _I_ _have to go._  

Rhaegal closes its eyes and straightens its wrinkled neck, adjusting the position to throw in flight. Jon follows him until the dragon becomes a tiny dot in the evening sky that became a fiery red. 

At the edge of the first tents of the camp, waiting for him as usual, there's Ghost. The direwolf trots out to meet him and sniffs him without restraint, licking the blood from his hands. As his leather jerkin, so its fur is smeared with mud and dried blood. Ghost too has to be just come back from battle. 

Jon knows that Ghost attend any attack, and also knows that, when it cannot be at his side because of Rhaegal, continues to lead the army to Winterfell, conducting the assault as a vengeful and bloody fury. The White Wolf of North, emblem of Winterfell. 

"This way, Your Grace." 

Jon wants to roll his eyes. He would like to remind this guy that he remembers the way, but a lovable and dear voice pleases him to be courteous. His weariness is tinged with nostalgia. Ghost yelps and Jon caresses him on the head sympathetically. "You misses her too, old friend?" 

He hears the screams even before crossing the entrance of the tent. He recognizes the voices and understands the reasons for the dispute. They are not unknown or new to him. Talk about military strategy to the allies Daenerys is like talking to the wind. They do not intend to listen to suggestions, but Tyrion was able to convince him of the necessity of his presence at their meetings. Meetings that take place every day, at sunset, in the tent of the queen of the Known World. 

"That's not how wars are won!" 

"Then it's not a war that I intend to win!" 

The moment he sets foot inside the opulent tent, the litigants stop talking. Representatives of all the powerful families of the Seven Kingdoms who are allied to Daenerys occupying a seat around the table with the war card. Ready to present their views and strategies, disguising their true intentions behind the common excuse that stimulates their act of belligerence. Revenge, for other justice. In either case, the whole is reduced to the same position culminating in the extermination of lions.

"Maybe I have to remember to whom you swore your friendship?" Danerys is arched menacingly forward with her arms out to the sides of the table and observes everyone with flaming eyes. "It is not to a lion, but to a dragon and a dragon does not accept compromises."

"Strange." Lady Olenna speaks sarcastically. "It did not seem that you had all these scruples when your dragons burned down an entire fleet in Meereen."

"Circumstances," Tyrion intervenes with a cautious smile, "were different from the present."

"Of course they were different." Lady Olenna reprimends him. "She could act as she wanted, like a Conqueror beyond the Narrow sea. This is why did you do not agree, girl? The idea that the smallfolk don't acclaim you like a long time they didn't celebrate the coming of your ancestors? Foreign invaders who brought a madness of fire and blood. No, I will not call you queen. Queen of what? Of an army of mercenaries and slaves who idolizes you because you gave them a handful of flies, and you called it freedom? You can be their queen, queen of slaves and mercenaries and traitors of their blood, but has yet to reach the day when you will become mine. Now, with your permission, my weary bones have suffered enough the torment of this chair. Not to mention what my ears had to endure."

When she gets up, her grief becomes evident in her delicate appearance. No matter how biting present herself, Lady Olenna is a woman who has lost everyone she loved. Her pain, her anger, her bitterness are all that remains of them. They are the ashes that feed the affection and pride that once she felt for her grandchildren. 

"I'll be damned if it is not the fierce wolf of the North!" She greets him. When she gets in front of him, she claims his arm and his company to be accompanied outside, to one of her maids. 

Jon mentions a greeting with his head as the old woman examines his appearance with an interest that is partly approval. "You have not seen fit to make yourself presentable?" 

"I have not had the occasion," he explains, not feeling uncomfortable, despite being aware of the miserable look that he has to give, dusty and covered with blood that is not his own. "I am returning from the battlefield." 

"I can see that. I'm old, boy, not blind. And what have you chosen to ride today? They say that after the first and only time the green monster didn’t accept you and even your wolf doesn’t dare to approach you when you are with the dragon." 

"It is not easy to reach the heart of a dragon." 

Lady Olenna raises both eyebrows suggestively. "The heart, you say?" 

Jon resists the urge to grimace. With anyone he finds himself talk, it seems that the allusions to Daenerys are wasting. 

"Don’t make that face, boy. If you don’t want to have this type of reaction, then learn to avoid speaking carelessly. Tell me the truth, your sister-wife did not teach you anything about diplomacy?" 

"Sansa isn't my sister." 

"No, she is not and it is very convenient, don’t you think?" 

"How did you know my wife?" 

Lady Olenna’s eyes, despite she distorts her nose with blame, are lost in the memories of what has been. "My niece, the gods bless her, thought very highly of Lady Sansa." 

"Sansa told me that you were hoping to arrange a marriage." 

The melancholy expression dissolves into a stern one. "What family did not hoping for something similar at that time? Today as then Sansa Stark remains a pawn in the game that all aspire to have on their side. Anyone who says otherwise is a fool or a liar and it is good that you protect yourself from both." 

"It was not my intention to be disrespectful," Jon says contrite. 

The woman's gaze softens considerably. "You're one of those decent, aren’t you?" She lays a hand on his arm and shakes her head. "Don’t be too good, boy. I'm not sure that it can end well for you, but I'm not sure of anything anymore." 

Recognizing one of the ladies that comes close, Jon moves to turn around, but Lady Olenna still holds him. "Your aunt," she tells, nodding toward the inside of the tent, "do you think you can trust her?" 

Jon doesn’t hesitate. "She doesn’t seem a bad person."

"No, she doesn't," Lady Olenna agrees, watching him in a singular way. "Compassionate, strict but fair. Definitely she knows how to present herself. Don’t trust too much the dragons, they hide a dark side in them, it's always been that way."

Jon nods gravely. "I'll keep that in mind."

_Indeed, who better than him can understand the truth of that?_

 

* * *

 

 

Infiltrate the lair of the dragons wasn’t easy. Everyone knows everyone, and no one trusts of new or unknown faces. On the contrary, infiltrate the camp of wolves it is all too easy.

For a moment the girl who is no one ruminates on the stupidity of her people, but then she remembers that they are not her people and that she can consider them so without feeling spite or guilt.

The only one who is not stupid is Jon and when she notices him from afar, along with other men sitting around a camp fire, she would run away in the opposite direction, disappearing just as she arrived. Is he who doesn’t allow this, in the most unexpected way possible. When Ghost appears at his side, in fact, the girl who is no one stays still as a statue or a tree heart as her breath shrivels in her throat and her ears begin to buzz. The direwolf is not moving. His fur gives off a pleasant warmth - forest scent and smell of the earth after the rain and _home_. It warms the hand, she does not remember how or when, that she tucked in its fur without noticing.

The wolf that lives inside Jon, like the one that lives inside her, must have warned him of the change that can be breathe in the starry night because suddenly his head snaps toward her and Arya - _she is not nobody but Arya of House Stark, daughter of Eddard Stark and Catelyn Tully, daughter and sister sister sister_ \- she is shaken by a tremor when Jon’s blacks eyes point the dark alcove where she remains hidden, not seen, but felt.

"Who's there?" She hears him ask.

Show herself would only require a few steps. And what the men would see? The face of what stranger would meet Jon? A dirty girl, ragged, ageless, thin as a birch tree, flat like the edge of a sword, with eyes that evaluate all lives according to their merit, disillusioned.

"Who's there?" Jon iterates decisively and Arya can already see him put up the sword whose hilt is the wolf head. The head of her father, who has been severed? Or Grey Wind, sewn onto Robb's body? Just a little while, she thinks with annoyance, then the other men, alerted, will draw their swords.

Arya kneels beside Ghost and buries her nose in its fur. "Go," she whispers and rediscovers again the same girl of long ago, sobbing and heartbroken as she said goodbye to a different wolf, in a camp with the wrong colors, for more noble reasons. But this girl has learned, this girl does not cry tears visible. "Go. I'll be joining you soon. Not now, but soon. I promise." 

Sidelong she can see that Jon is rising and that the man next to him, red-bearded and with a resonant laugh, is doing likewise. 

"Go," she insists. Ghost looks at her with red eyes full of wisdom. "Trust me." 

The direwolf lingers, but after a while obeys and advances.

Jon's face lightens with relief at the sight of Ghost. He sheathes his sword and sits, but his eyes, though unfathomable, return to observe the angle in which she is hidden, doubtful. 

 _This girl has learned, this girl does not cry tears visible._

The furtive shadow of a forlorn girl walks away from the camp fire and from the man who once was her brother, but that now is the same as his father. What is a face if not a memory? Jon's face, she has discovered, it is that twice. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the delay of this chapter and for the long wait. Write it was fun but difficult. Write from Jon's point of view is always difficult for me. Instead write Arya is fun and easy as breathing. I hope you've enjoyed reading! Thanks as always for your support and a special thanks to the wonderful people who give me a moment of their time and through the reviews make me notice typos or errors (I'm not a native speaker, so my gratitude is sincere and deep!). You guys are great and precious and I love you all!


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